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[Transcriber's Notes]
The other five texts in this series were obtained from the 1912 edition
of original books. Volume 3 was missing from the set.
This text, Volume 3, is derived from a PDF image file of the 1896 edition
on the Internet Archive at
http://www.archive.org/details/histusearliest03andrrich
1
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
BY
E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS
PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY
VOLUME III
2
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
CONTENTS
PERIOD II
1814--1840
3
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
4
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Jackson's Life.
Mistaken Ideas.
Civil Service Reform.
Perfecting of Party
Organization in the Country.
Jackson and the United States Bank.
His Popularity.
Revival of West Indian Trade.
French Spoliation Claims.
Paid.
Our Gold and Silver Coinage.
Gold Bill.
Increased Circulation of Gold.
Specie Circular.
5
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
6
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
PERIOD III
1840-1860
7
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
8
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
9
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
10
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
PERIOD IV
1860-1868
An "Irrepressible Conflict."
Growth of North.
Influence of Missouri Compromise Repeal.
Slavery as Viewed by the South.
Stephens.
Anti-Democratic Habits of Thought.
Compact Theory of the Union.
State Consciousness, South.
Argument for the Calhoun Theory.
Secession not Justifiable by this.
Moderates and Fire-eaters.
Northern Grievances.
Do not Excuse Secession.
Lincoln's Election.
Patriotic and Philanthropic Considerations Ignored.
Prudence also.
Resources of South and of North.
11
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
12
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Apathy.
Disbelief in South's Seriousness.
Divided Opinion.
Suggestions toward Compromise.
Anti-coercion.
Convention at Albany.
Mayor Wood of New York.
Buchanan's Vacillation.
Treason all about Him.
Star of the West Fired on.
Inaction of Congress.
Crittenden's Compromise Lost.
Washington Peace Congress.
Vain.
Earnestness of South.
Lincoln Inaugurated.
His Address.
How Received.
His Difficult Task.
Plight of Army, Navy, Treasury.
Sumter Fired on.
Defended.
Evacuated.
Effect at North.
War Spirit.
75,000 Volunteers.
The Sixth Massachusetts in Baltimore.
Washington in Danger.
General Scott's Measures.
March of the Massachusetts Eighth and the New York Seventh.
Their Arrival in Washington.
13
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Butler in Baltimore.
Maryland Saved to the Union.
Alexandria and Arlington
Heights Occupied.
Ellsworth's Death.
Each Side Concentrates Armies in Virginia.
Fight at Big Bethel.
At Vienna.
The Struggle in Missouri.
Lyon and Price.
Battle of Wilson's Creek.
Lyon's Death.
Fremont, Hunter, and Halleck in Missouri.
The Contest in Kentucky.
The State becomes Unionist.
In West Virginia.
Lee and McClellan.
Brilliant Campaign of the Latter.
West Virginia Made a State.
Beauregard at Manassas.
Patterson's Advance.
Harper's Ferry Taken.
"On to Richmond."
Battle of Bull Run.
Union Defeat and Retreat.
Losses.
Comments.
Depression at the North, followed by New Resolution.
McClellan.
Army of Potomac Organized.
The Capital Safe.
Affair of Ball's Bluff.
The South Hopeful.
And with Reason.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
14
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
DANIEL WEBSTER.
(From a picture by Healy at the State Department, Washington).
JOHN RANDOLPH.
(From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society).
JAMES MONROE.
(From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--now the property of T. Jefferson
Coolidge).
ROGER B. TANEY.
A PONY EXPRESS.
15
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
16
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
MILLARD FILLMORE.
(From a painting by Carpenter in 1853. at the City Hall, New York).
FRANKLIN PIERCE.
(From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery).
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.
CHARLES SUMNER.
THOMAS H. BENTON.
JOHN BROWN.
ELIAS HOWE.
S. F. B. MORSE.
17
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
CYRUS W. FIELD.
BARNACLES ON CABLE.
JEFFERSON DAVIS.
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.
LIST OF MAPS
18
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
PERIOD II.
1814-1840
CHAPTER I.
[1820]
The term "whig" is of Scotch origin. During the bloody conflict of the
Covenanters with Charles II. nearly all the country people of Scotland
sided against the king. As these peasants drove into Edinburgh to
market, they were observed to make great use of the word "whiggam" in
talking to their horses. Abbreviated to "whig," it speedily became, and
has in England and Scotland ever since remained, a name for the
opponents of royal power. It was so employed in America in our
Revolutionary days. Sinking out of hearing after Independence, it
reappeared for fresh use when schism came in the overgrown Democratic
Party.
19
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
side. Since it was evident that the new party was quite as national in
spirit as the ruling element of the old, the Adams Federalists, those
most patriotic, least swayed in their politics by commercial motives,
including Marshall, the War Federalists, and the recruits enlisted at
the South during Adams's administration, also went over, in sympathy if
not in name, to Republicanism. The fortunate issue of the war silenced
every carper, and the ten years following have been well named the "era
of good feeling."
But though for long very harmonious, yet, so soon as Federalists began
swelling their ranks, the Republicans ceased to be a strictly
homogeneous party. Incipient schism appeared by 1812, at once announced
and widened by the creation of the protective system and the new United
States Bank in 1816, and the attempted launching of an internal
improvements regime in 1821, all three the plain marks of federalist
survival, however men might shun that name. Republicans like Clay,
Calhoun in his early years, and Quincy Adams, while somewhat more
obsequious to the people, as to political theory differed from old
Federalists in little but name. The same is true of Clinton, candidate
against Madison for the Presidency in 1812, and of many who supported
him.
[1825]
But to drive home fatally the wedge between "democratic" and "national"
Republicans, required Jackson's quarrel with Adams and Clay in 1825,
when, the election being thrown into the House, although Jackson had
ninety-nine electoral votes to Adams's eighty-four, Crawford's
forty-one, and Clay's thirty-seven, Clay's supporters, by a "corrupt
bargain," as Old Hickory alleged, voted for Adams and made him
President. Hickory's idea--an untenable one--was that the House was
bound to elect according to the tenor of the popular and the electoral
vote. After all this, however, so potent the charm of the old party, the
avowal of a purpose to build up a new one did not work well, Clay
polling in 1832 hardly half the electoral vote of Adams in 1828. This
democratic gain was partly owing, it is true, to Jackson's popularity,
to the belief that he had been wronged in 1825, and to the widening of
the franchise which had long been going on in the nation. Calhoun's
election as Vice-President in 1828, by a large majority, shows that
party crystallization was then far from complete. From about 1834, the
new political body thus gradually evolved was regularly called the
Whigs, though the name had been heard ever since 1825.
20
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1830-1833]
The First United States Bank had perished by the expiration of its
charter in 1811. It had been very useful, indeed almost indispensable,
in managing the national finances, and its decease, with the consequent
financial disorder, was a most terrible drawback in the war. Recharter
was, however, by a very small majority, refused. The evils flowing from
this perverse step manifesting themselves day by day, a new Bank of the
United States, modelled closely after the first, was chartered on April
10, 1816, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster being its chief champions.
Republican opponents, Madison among them, were brought around by the
plea that war had proved a national bank a necessary and hence a
constitutional helper of the Government in its appointed work.
Until the War of 1812 the main purpose of our tariff policy had been
revenue, with protection only as an incident. During the war
manufacturing became largely developed, partly through our own embargo,
partly through the armed hostilities. Manufacture had grown to be an
extensive interest, comparing in importance with agriculture and
commerce. Therefore, in the new tariff of 1816, the old relation was
21
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
reversed, protection being made the main aim and revenue the incident.
It is curious to note that this first protective tariff was championed
and passed by the Republicans and bitterly opposed by the Federalists
and incipient Whigs. Webster argued and inveighed vehemently against it,
appealing to the curse of commercial restriction and of governmental
interference with trade, and to the low character of manufacturing
populations.
But very soon the tables were turned: the Whigs became the high-tariff
party, the Democrats more and more opposing this policy in favor of a
low or a revenue tariff. It should be marked that even now the idea of
protection in its modern form was not the only one which went to make a
high tariff popular. There were, besides, the wish to be prepared for
war by the home production of war material, and also the spirit of
commercial retortion, paying back in her own coin England's burdensome
tax upon our exports to her shores.
IV. Land.
What may not improperly be styled the whig land policy sprung from the
whig sentiment for large customs duties. Cheap public lands, offering
each poor man a home for the taking, constantly tended to neutralize the
effect of duties, by raising wages in the manufacturing sections, people
needing a goodly bribe to enter mills in the East when an abundant
living was theirs without money and without price on removing west. As a
rule, therefore, though this question did not divide the two parties so
crisply as the others, the Whigs opposed the free sale of government
land, while the Democrats favored that policy. In spite of this,
however, eastern people who moved westward--and they constituted the
West's main population--quite commonly retained their whig politics even
upon the tariff question itself.
V. Internal Improvements.
It has always been admitted that Congress may lay taxes to build and
improve light-houses, public docks, and all such properties whereof the
United States is to hold the title. The general improvement of harbors,
on the other hand, the Constitution meant to leave to the States,
allowing each to cover the expense by levying tonnage duties. The
practice for years corresponded with this. The inland commonwealths,
however, as they were admitted, justly regarded this unfair unless
offset by Government's aid to them in the construction of roads, canals,
and river ways.
22
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
The War of 1812 revealed the need of better means for direct
communication with the remote sections of the Union. Transportation to
Detroit had cost fifty cents per pound of ammunition, sixty dollars per
barrel of flour. All admitted that improved internal routes were
necessary. The question was whether the general Government had a right
to construct them without amendment to the Constitution.
The Whigs, like the old Federalists, affirmed such right, appealing to
Congress's power to establish post-roads, wage war, supervise
inter-state trade, and conserve the common defence and general welfare.
As a rule, the Democrats, being strict constructionists, denied such
right. Some of them justified outlay upon national rivers and commercial
harbors under the congressional power of raising revenue and regulating
commerce. Others conceded the rightfulness of subsidies to States even
for bettering inland routes. Treasury surplus at times, and the many
appropriations which, by common consent, had been made under Monroe and
later for the old National Road, encouraged the whig contention; but the
whig policy had never met general approval down to the time when the
whole question was taken out of politics by the rise of the railroad
system after 1832. The National Road, meantime, extending across Ohio
and Indiana on its way to St. Louis, was made over in 1830 to the States
through which it passed.
23
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
The Whig Party deserves great praise as the especial repository, through
several decades, of the spirit of nationality in our country. It
cherished this, and with the utmost boldness proclaimed doctrines
springing from it, at a time when the Democracy, for no other reason
than that it had begun as a state rights party, foolishly combated
these. Yet Whiggism was mightier in theories than in deeds, in political
cunning than in statesmanship. It was far too fearful, on the whole,
lest the country should not be sufficiently governed. To secure power it
allied itself now with the Anti-Masons, strong after 1826 in New
England, New York, and Pennsylvania; and again with the Nullifiers of
South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, led by Calhoun, Troup, and
White. It did the latter by making Tyler, an out-and-out Nullifier, its
24
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Vice-President in 1840.
A leading Whig during nearly all his political career was John Quincy
Adams, one of the ablest, most patriotic, and most successful presidents
this country has ever had. He possessed a thorough education, mainly
acquired abroad, where, sojourning with his distinguished father, he had
enjoyed while still a youth better opportunities for diplomatic training
than many of our diplomatists have known in a lifetime. He went to the
United States Senate in 1803 as a Federalist. Disgusted with that party,
he turned Republican, losing his place. From 1806 to 1809 he was
professor in Harvard College. In the latter year Madison sent him
Minister to St. Petersburg. He was commissioner at Ghent, then Minister
to England, then Monroe's Secretary of State, then President.
But Mr. Adams's best work was done in the House of Representatives after
he was elected to that body in 1830. He sat in the House until his
death, in 1848--its acknowledged leader in ability, in activity, and in
debate. Friend and foe hailed him as the "Old Man Eloquent," nor were
any there anxious to be pitted against him. He spoke upon almost every
great national question, each time displaying general knowledge; legal
lore, and keenness of analysis surpassed by no American of his or any
age.
Webster was, however, the great orator of the party. Reared upon a farm
and educated at Dartmouth College, he went to Congress from New
Hampshire as a Federalist in 1813. Removing to Boston, he soon entered
Congress from Massachusetts, first as representative, then as senator,
and from 1827 was in the Senate almost continuously till 1850. He was
Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler, and again in the
Taylor-Fillmore cabinet from 1850.
25
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
As an orator Webster had no peer in his time, nor have the years since
evoked his peer. He was an influential party leader, and repeatedly
thought of for President, though too prominent ever to be nominated. On
two momentous questions, the tariff and slavery, he vacillated, his
dubious action concerning the latter costing him his popularity in New
England.
26
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Yet in many respects the most interesting figure in the party was Henry
Clay. He was born amid the swamps of Hanover County, Va., and had grown
up in most adverse surroundings. His father, a Baptist clergyman, died
while he was an infant, leaving him destitute. In "The Slashes," as the
neighborhood where Clay passed his childhood was called, he might often
have been seen astride a sorry horse with a rope bridle and no saddle,
carrying his bag of grain to the mill. He had attended only district
schools. After obtaining the rudiments of a legal education in Richmond
by service as a lawyer's clerk, he removed to Kentucky. He was soon
famous as a criminal lawyer, and a little later as a politician. The
rest of his life was spent in Congress or cabinet.
Clay's speeches read ill, but were powerful in their delivery. He spoke
27
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
directly to the heart. As he proceeded, his tall and awkward form swayed
with passion. His voice was sweet and winsome. Once Tom Marshall was to
face him in joint debate over a salary grab for which Clay had voted.
Clay had the first word, and as he warmed to his work Marshall slunk
away through the crowd in despair. "Come back," said Clay's haters to
him; "you can answer every point." "Of course," replied Marshall, "but I
can't get up there and do it now." The common people shouted for Clay as
they shouted for neither Webster nor Adams. He had infinite fund of
anecdote, remembered everyone he had ever seen, and was kindly to all.
John Tyler is said to have wept when Clay failed of the Presidential
nomination in the Whig Convention of 1839.
[1840]
28
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
John Randolph.
From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society.
CHAPTER II.
29
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1816]
This claim by Spain, based only on the "retro" in the treaty of 1800,
our Government viewed as fanciful, regarding West Florida undoubtedly
ours through the Louisiana purchase. Spain was intractable, first of
herself, later still more so through Napoleon's dictation. Hence our
offer, in Jefferson's time, to avoid war, of a lump sum for the two
Floridas was spurned by her. In 1810 and 1811, to save it from
anarchy--also to save it from Great Britain or France, now in the
whitest heat of their contest for Spain--we occupied West Florida, as
certainly entitled to it against those powers, yet with no view of
precluding further negotiations with Spain. When in 1812 Louisiana
became a State, its eastern boundary ran as now, including a goodly
portion of the region in debate.
[1817]
The necessity of acquiring East Florida, too, was more and more
apparent. That country was without rule, full of filibusterers,
privateers, hostile refugee Creeks and runaway negroes, of whose
services the English had availed themselves freely during the war of
1812, when Spaniards and English made Florida a perpetual base for
hostile raids into our territory. A fort then built by the English on
the Appalachicola and left intact at the peace with some arms and
ammunition, had been occupied by the negroes, who, from this retreat,
menaced the peace beyond the line. Spain could not preserve law and
order here. This was perhaps a sufficient excuse for the act of General
Gaines in crossing into Florida and bombarding the negro fort, July 27,
1816. Amelia Island, on the Florida coast, a nest of lawless men from
every nation, was in 1817 also seized by the United States with the same
propriety. Knowledge that Spain resented these acts encouraged the
30
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1818]
31
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
With the country the New Orleans victor, who had now dared to hang a
British subject, was ten times a hero, but the deed confused and
troubled Monroe's cabinet not a little. Calhoun wished General Jackson
censured, while all his cabinet colleagues disapproved his high-handed
acts and stood ready to disavow them with reparation. On this occasion
Jackson owed much to one whom he subsequently hated and denounced, viz.,
Quincy Adams, by whose bold and acute defence of his doubtful doings,
managed with a fineness of argument and diplomacy which no then American
but Adams could command, he was formally vindicated before both his own
Government and the Governments of England and Spain.
The posts seized had of course to be given up, yet our bold invasion had
rendered Spain willing at last to sell Florida, while Great Britain,
wishing our countenance in her opposition to the anti-progressive,
misnamed Holy Alliance of continental monarchs, concurred. Spain after
all got the better of the bargain, as we surrendered all claim to Texas,
which the Louisiana purchase had really made ours.
[1823]
32
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
began to moot plans for subduing the new Spanish-American States. Great
Britain opposed this, out of motives partly commercial, partly
philanthropic, partly relating to international law, yet was unwilling
so early to recognize the independence of those nations as the United
States had done.
The second part added: "The American continents, by the free and
independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are
henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by
any European powers." The meaning of this was that the mere hap of first
occupancy on the continent by the citizens of any country would not any
longer be recognized by us as giving that country a title to the spot
occupied.
CHAPTER III.
33
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1818]
Being found in this extensive domain at the purchase, slavery had never
been hindered in its growth. It had therefore taken firm root and was
popular. The application, early in 1818, of the densest part of Missouri
Territory for admission into the Union as a slave State, called
attention to this threatening status of slavery beyond the Mississippi,
and occasioned in Congress a prolonged, able, angry, and momentous
debate. Jefferson, still alive, wrote, "The Missouri question is the
most portentous which has ever threatened the Union. In the gloomiest
hour of the Revolutionary War I never had apprehensions equal to those
which I feel from this source."
To see the bearing of the tremendous question thus raised, we have need
of a retrospect. Property in man is older than history and has been
nearly universal. It cannot be doubted that in an early stage of human
development slavery is a means of furthering civilization. Negro slavery
originated in Africa, spread to Spain before the discovery of America,
to America soon after, and from the Spanish colonies to the English. The
first notice we have of it in English America is that in
1619 a Dutch ship landed twenty blacks at Jamestown for sale. The Dutch
West India Company began importing slaves into Manhattan in 1626. There
were slaves in New England by 1637. Newport was subsequently a great
harbor for slavers. Georgia offered the strongest resistance to the
introduction of the system, but it was soon overcome. Till about 1700,
Virginia had a smaller proportion of slave population than some northern
colonies, and the change later was mostly due to considerations not of
morality but of profit. Anti-slavery cries were indeed heard from an
early period, but they were few and faint. Penn held slaves, though
ordering their emancipation at his death. Whitfield thought slavery to
be of God. But its most culpable abettor was the English Government,
moved by the profits of the slave trade. A Royal African Company, with
the Duke of York, afterward James II., for some time its president, was
formed to monopolize this business, which monarchs and ministries
furthered to the utmost of their power.
Thus the Revolution found slavery in all the colonies, north as well as
south. But it was then, so far south as Virginia, thought to be an evil.
That commonwealth had passed many laws to restrain it, but the King had
commanded the Governor not to assent to any of them. The Legislature,
replying, stigmatized the traffic as inhuman and a threat to the very
existence of the colony. Hostility extended from the trade to slavery
itself. Jefferson was for emancipation with deportation, and trembled
34
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
for his country as he reflected upon the wrong of slavery and the
justice of God. Patrick Henry, George Mason, Peyton Randolph,
Washington, Madison, in a word all the great Virginians of the time held
similar views.
The Ordinance of 1787 for the Northwest Territory marked a most decisive
point in the history of slavery. By its decree, in Jefferson's language,
there was never to be either slavery or involuntary servitude in the
said territory otherwise than in punishment for crimes. It is to the
everlasting honor of the southern members then in the Continental
Congress that they all voted for this inhibition. Virginia, whose assent
as a State was necessary to its validity, she having at this time rights
over much of the domain in question, also concurred. Whatever the
strictly legal weight of this prohibition over the immense Louisiana
purchase, it certainly aided much in confirming freedom as the
presupposition and maxim of our law over all our national territory.
35
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
We hardly need say that this strife ended in a compromise. Missouri was
created a slave State, balanced by Maine as a free State, but at the
same time slavery was to be excluded forever from all the remainder of
the Louisiana purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the southern
line of Virginia and Kentucky as well as of Missouri itself. The land
between Missouri and Louisiana had been in 1819 erected into the
"Territory of Arkansaw."
There were with these, men who acted from mere policy, thinking it best
to admit the slave State because of the difficulty and also the danger
to the Union of suppressing slavery there. They appealed as well to the
sacred compromises in the Constitution, meaning the permission at first
to import slaves, the three-fifths rule for slave representation in
36
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Congress, and the fugitive slave clause. They spoke much of the
necessity of preserving the balance of power within the Union, and of
Congress's inaction as to slavery in the Louisiana purchase hitherto,
and also in Florida. These arguments won many professed foes of slavery,
as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Quincy Adams. In all Congress Clay was
the most earnest pleader for the compromise.
To all these arguments the unbending friends of free soil replied that
property right was subordinate to the national good, and that Congress
had full power over territorial institutions and should never have
permitted slavery to curse the domain in question. If it had committed
error in the past, that could not excuse continuance in error. The terms
of the Louisiana purchase, it was further urged, could not, even if they
had been meant to do so, which was not true, detract from this sovereign
power. It was pointed out that in every case in which a State had been
admitted thus far, Congress had prescribed conditions. It was boldly
said, still further, that if slavery threatened disunion unless allowed
its way, it ought all the more to be denied its way.
CHAPTER IV.
[1816-1828]
37
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
the tariff of 1816 was free, now bore, some grades fifteen, some twenty,
some thirty per cent. Iron duties were put up in 1818 and again in 1824,
from which date for ten years they ranged between forty and one hundred
per cent. The whole tendency of tariff rates was strongly upward. The
duty upon all dutiables averaged between 1816 and 1824 only twenty-four
and a half per cent; from 1824 to 1828 the average was thirty-two and a
half per cent. Importation remained copious, notwithstanding, which made
the cry for protection louder than ever.
[1828]
From Quincy Adams's presidency the tariff question becomes on the one
hand political, dividing Whigs from Democrats about exactly, which had
never been the case before, and on the other, sectional, the West, the
Centre, and now also the East, pitted against the solid South, except
Louisiana. The year 1824 heard Webster's last speech for free trade and
saw Calhoun's and Jackson's last vote for protection. However, so strong
was the protectionist sentiment in the XXth Congress, though democratic,
that free-traders could hope to defeat the new tariff bill of 1828 only
by rendering it odious to New England. They therefore conspired to make
prohibitive its rates for Smyrna wool, and nearly so those on iron,
hemp, and cordage for ship-building; also on molasses, the raw material
for rum, whereon no drawback was longer to be allowed if it was
exported.
38
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
This illustrates the famous "minimum principle," which has played such a
figure in all our tariff history since 1816, its effect being always to
make the tariff much higher than it seems. Thus in the case before us,
most of the woollens then imported cost about ninety cents. If based on
this price, the tariff would be thirty-six per cent., but if based on
$2.50 as the price, it would mount up to one hundred and ten per cent.
To prevent this and to render the bill still more unpalatable to the
39
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
But as this was after all more vigorous protection than woollens had
before received, amounting, through minima, in some cases to over one
hundred per cent., sixteen out of the thirty-nine New England members,
led by Webster, accepted this universally odious tariff bill--the Tariff
of Abominations, it was called--as the preferable evil, and, aided by a
few Democrats in each house, made it a law. The average duty on
dutiables was now about forty-three and a third per cent.
No one can question that this high tariff worked injustice to the South.
It forced from her an undue share of the national taxes, as well as
extensive tribute to northern manufacturers. But in resenting the evil
she exaggerated it, mistakenly referring all the relative decrease in
her prosperity to tariff legislation, when a great part of it was due
simply to slavery. The South complained that selfishness and political
ambition, not patriotism or reason, determined the dominant policy, and
there was of course some truth in this. Moreover, as New England now
favored it, this policy bade fair to become permanent, and since the
tariff bills did not announce protection as their purpose, the
constitutionality of them could not be gotten before the courts.
[1830]
[1832]
John C. Calhoun was now, except, perhaps, Clay, the ablest and most
influential politician in all the South. Born in South Carolina in 1782,
of Irish-Presbyterian parentage, though poor and in youth ill-educated
like Clay and Jackson, his energy carried him through Yale College, and
through a course of legal study at Litchfield, Conn., where stood the
only law school then in America. November, 1811, found him a member of
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Congress, on fire for war with Britain. Monroe's Secretary of War for
seven years from 1817, he was in 1825 elected Vice-President, and
reelected in 1828. He had meantime turned an ardent free-trader, and
seeing the North's predominance in the Union steadily increasing, had
built up a nullification theory based upon that of the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions and the Hartford Convention, and upon the history
of the formation of our Constitution. He had worked out to his own
satisfaction the untenable view that each State had the right, not in
the way of revolution but under the Constitution itself--as a contract
between parties that had no superior referee--to veto national laws upon
its own judgment of their unconstitutionality.
John C. Calhoun
From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery.
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This was the quintessence of folly even had good theory been behind it.
The tone of the proceeding was too hasty and peremptory. The decided
turn of public opinion and of congressional action in favor of large
reduction in duties was ignored. But the theory appealed to was clearly
wrong, and along with its advocates was sure to be reprobated by the
nation. A precious opportunity effectively to redress the evil
complained of was wantonly thrown away. Worst of all, from a tactical
point of view, South Carolina had miscalculated the spirit of President
Jackson. At the dinner referred to, his toast had been the memorable
words: "Our Federal Union; it must be preserved." Men now saw that Old
Hickory was in earnest. General Scott, with troops and warships, was
ordered to Charleston.
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the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof" are "the
supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any
State to the contrary notwithstanding," means precisely what it says. To
this language little attention had apparently been paid till this time.
CHAPTER V.
[1828]
Andrew Jackson was born March 15, 1767. His parents had come from
Carrick-fergus, Ireland, two years before. He was without any education
worthy the name. As a boy, he went into the War for Independence, and
was for a time a British prisoner. He studied law in North Carolina,
moved west, and began legal practice at Nashville. He was one of the
framers of the Tennessee constitution in 1796. In 1797 he was a senator
from that State, and subsequently he was a judge on its supreme bench.
His exploits in the Creek War, the War of 1812, and the Seminole War are
already familiar. They had brought him so prominently and favorably
before the country that in 1824 his vote, both popular and electoral,
was larger than that of any other candidate. As we have seen, he himself
and multitudes throughout the country thought him wronged by the
election over him of John Quincy Adams. This contributed largely to his
popularity later, and in 1828 he was elected by a popular vote of
647,231, against 509,097 for Adams. Four years later he was reelected
against Clay by a still larger majority. Nor did his popularity to any
extent wane during his double administration, notwithstanding his many
violent and indiscreet acts as President.
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After all, Jackson was by no means the ignorant and passionate old man,
controlled in everything by Van Buren, that many people, especially in
New England, have been accustomed to think him. Illiterate he certainly
was, though Adams exaggerated in calling him "a barbarian who could not
write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name." He was
never popular in the federalist section of the Union. Yet with all his
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The most just criticism of Jackson in his time and later related to the
civil service. It was during his administration that the cry, "turn the
rascals out," first arose, and it is well known that, adopting the
policy of New York and Pennsylvania politicians in vogue since 1800, he
made nearly a clean sweep of his political opponents from the offices at
his disposal. This was the more shameful from being so in contrast with
the policy of preceding presidents. Washington removed but two men from
office, one of these a defaulter; Adams ten, one of these also a
defaulter; Jefferson but thirty-nine; Madison five, three of them
defaulters; and Monroe nine. The younger Adams removed but two, both of
them for cause.
[1830]
[1832]
Jackson's dearest foe while in office was the United States Bank.
Magnifying the dishonesty which had, as everyone knew, disgraced its
management, he attacked it as a monster, an engine of the moneyed
classes for grinding the face of the poor. Like Jefferson, like Madison
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Roger B. Taney.
[1833]
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[1830]
When Jackson became President, France was still in our debt on account
of her spoliations upon American commerce after the settlement of 1803.
The matter had been in negotiation ever since 1815, but hitherto in
vain. Jackson took it up with zeal, but with his usual apparent
recklessness. A treaty had been concluded in 1831, as a final settlement
between the two countries, binding France to pay twenty-five million
francs and the United States to pay one and one-half million. The first
instalment from France became due February 2, 1833, but was not paid.
Jackson's message to Congress in 1834, not an instalment having yet been
received, contained a distinct threat of war should not payment begin
forthwith. He also bade Edward Livingston, minister at Paris, in the
same contingency to demand his passports and leave Paris for London.
[1835]
Most public men, even those in his cabinet, thought this action
foolhardy and useless; but Quincy Adams, neither expecting nor receiving
any thanks for it, just as in the Seminole War difficulty, nobly stood
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
up for the President. A telling speech by him in the House led to its
unanimous resolution, March 2, 1835, that the execution of the treaty
should be insisted on. The French ministry blustered, and for a time
diplomatic relations between the two countries were entirely ruptured.
But France, affecting to see in the message of 1835, though voiced in
precisely the same tone as its predecessor, some apology for the menace
contained in that, began its payments. This money, as also all due from
the other states included in Napoleon's continental system, was paid
during Jackson's administration, a result which brought him and his
party great praise, not more for the money than for the respect and
consideration secured to the United States by insistence upon its
rights. The President's message to Congress in 1835 announced the entire
extinguishment of the public debt--the first and the last time this has
occurred in all our national history.
[1834-1836]
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In 1836 the President ordered his Secretary of the Treasury to put forth
the famous Specie Circular, declaring that only gold, silver, or land
scrip should be received in payment for public lands. The occasion of
this was that while land sales were very rapidly increasing, the
receipts hitherto had consisted largely in the notes of insolvent banks.
Land speculators would organize a bank, procure for it, if they could,
the favor of being a "pet" bank, issue notes, borrow these as
individuals and buy land with them. The notes were deposited, when they
would borrow them again to buy land with, and so on. As there was little
specie in the West, the circular broke up many a fine plan, and evoked
much ill-feeling. Gold was drawn from the East, where, as many of the
banks had none too much, the drain caused not a few of them to collapse.
The condition of business at this time was generally unsound, and this
westward movement of gold was all that was needed to precipitate a
crisis. A crisis accordingly came on soon after, painfully severe. It is
unfair, however, to arraign Jackson's order as wholly responsible for
the evils which accompanied this monetary cataclysm. It was rather an
occasion than the cause.
CHAPTER VI.
[1837]
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There were several causes for this defeat. Jackson had made many enemies
as well as many friends, some of these within his own party, while the
entire opposition to him was indescribably bitter on account of the
personal element entering into the struggle. The commendably national
spirit of the Whig Party told well in its favor. Upon this point its
attitude proved far more in accord with the best sentiment of the nation
than that of the Democracy, sound as the latter was at the core and
nobly as its chief had behaved in the nullification crisis.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
One of Van Buren's earliest acts after assuming office was to call an
extra session of Congress for September 4, 1837, to consider the
financial condition of the country. When it convened, an increase of the
whig vote was apparent, though the Democrats were still in the majority.
On the President's recommendation, agitation now began in favor of the
sub-treasury or independent treasury plan, still in use to-day, of
keeping the government moneys. This had been first broached in 1834-35
by Whigs. The Democrats then opposed it; but now they took it up as a
means of counteracting the whig purpose to revive a national bank.
There was soon less need of any such special arrangement, as the
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
treasury was swiftly running dry. In June of the preceding year, 1836,
both parties concurring, an act had passed providing that after January
1, 1837, all surplus revenue should be distributed to the States in
proportion to their electoral votes. It was meant to be a loan, to be
recalled, however, only by vote of Congress, but it proved a donation.
Twenty-eight millions were thus paid in all, never to return. Such a
disposition of the revenue had now to be stopped and reverse action
instituted. Importers called for time on their revenue bonds, which had
to be allowed, and this checked income. This special session was needed
to authorize an issue of ten millions in treasury notes to tide the
Government over the crisis.
[1840]
Another influence which now worked powerfully against the Democracy was
hostility to slavery. This campaign--it was the first--saw a "Liberty
Party" in the field, with its own candidates, Birney and Earle. The
abolition sentiment, of which more will be said in a subsequent chapter,
was growing day by day, and little as the Whigs could be called an
antislavery party on the whole, their rank and file were very much more
of that mind than those of the opposition. Jackson had ranted wildly
against the despatch of abolition literature through the mails. The
second Seminole War, 1835-42, was waged mainly in deference to
slave-holders, to recover for them their Florida runaways, and, by
removal of the Seminoles beyond the Mississippi, to break up a popular
resort for escaped negroes. The Indians, under Osceola, whose wife, as
daughter to a slave-mother, had been treacherously carried back into
bondage, fought like tigers. After their massacre of Major Dade and his
detachment, Generals Gaines, Jesup, Taylor, Armistead, and Worth
successively marched against them, none but the last-named successful in
subduing them. Over 500 persons had been restored to slavery, each one
costing the Government, as was estimated, at least $80,000 and the lives
of three white soldiers.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1839]
Van Buren was to the slavocrats even more obsequious than Jackson. His
spirit was shown, among other things, by the Amistad case, in 1839. The
schooner Amistad was sailing between Havana and Puerto Principe with a
cargo of negroes kidnapped in Africa. Under the lead of a bright negro
named Cinque the captives revolted and killed or confined all the crew
but two, whom they commanded to steer the ship for Africa. Instead,
these directed her to the United States coast, where she was seized off
Long Island by a war vessel and brought into New London. The negroes
were, even by Spanish law, not slaves but free men, as Spain had
prohibited the slave trade. Yet when their case was tried before the
district court, Mr. Van Buren spared no effort to procure their release
to the Spanish claimants. He even had a government vessel all ready to
convey the poor victims back to Cuba. The district court having decided
for the blacks, the government attorney appealed to the circuit court,
thence also to the supreme court. Final judgment happily re-affirmed
that the men were free. The supreme court trial was the occasion of one
of John Quincy Adams's most splendid forensic victories, he being the
counsel for the negroes.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1840]
It proved good politics for the Whigs in 1840 to pass over Clay and
adopt as their candidate William Henry Harrison. He had indeed been
unsuccessful in 1836, owing to the great popularity of Jackson, all
whose influence went for Van Buren; but now that "Little Van," or
"Matty," as Jackson used to call him, stood alone, Harrison had a better
chance. His political record had been inconspicuous but honorable.
Nothing could be alleged against his character. He was a gentleman of
some ability, while his brilliant military record in 1812, now revived
to the minutest detail, gave him immense popularity. Every surviving
Tippecanoe or Thames veteran stumped his vicinity for the old war-horse.
Many wavering Democrats in the South, especially those of the
nullification stripe, were toled to the whig ticket by the nomination of
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
John Tyler for Vice-President. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" rang through
the land as the whig watchword for the campaign. During the
electioneering every hamlet was regaled with portrayals of Harrison's
simple farm life at North Bend, where, a log cabin his dwelling, and
hard cider--so one would have supposed--his sole beverage, he had been a
genuine Cincinnatus. "Tippecanoe and Tyler" were therefore elected;
their popular vote numbering 1,275,017, against 1,128,702 polled for Van
Buren.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Tyler, coming in, showed that though training under the whig banner, he
had not renounced a single one of his democratic principles. The Whigs
scorned and soon officially repudiated him During the entire four years
that he held office there was constant deadlock between him and the
slight whig majority in Congress, which gave the Democrats main control
in legislation. The panic of 1837 was forgotten, while the hold of the
Democracy upon the country was so firm that its gains in Congress and
its triumphs in the States once more went steadily on.
CHAPTER VII.
[1835]
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
John Tyler
From a photograph by Brady.
By 1840 nearly all the land of the United States this side the
Mississippi had been taken up by settlers. The last districts to be
occupied were Northern Maine, the Adirondack region of New York, a strip
in Western Virginia from the Potomac southward through Kentucky nearly
to the Tennessee line, the Pine Barrens of Georgia, and the extremities
of Michigan and Wisconsin. Beyond the Father of Waters his shores were
mostly occupied, as well as those of his main tributaries, a good way
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
from their mouths. The Missouri Valley had population as far as Kansas
City. Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa Territory had many settlements at
some distance from the streams. The aggregate population of the country
was 17,069,453, the average density twenty-one and a tenth to the square
mile. The mass of westward immigration was as yet native, since the
great rush from Europe only began about 1847. This was fortunate, as
fixing forever the American stamp upon the institutions of western
States. To compensate each new commonwealth for the non-taxation of the
United States land it contained, it received one township in each
thirty-six as its own for educational purposes, a provision to which is
due the magnificent school system of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa,
Minnesota, and their younger sisters.
Farther east, too, there had, of course, been growth, but it was slower.
In 1827 Hartford had but 6,900 inhabitants; New Haven, 7,100; Newark, N.
J., 6,500, and New Brunswick about the same. The State of New York paid
out, between 1815 and 1825, nearly $90,000 for the destruction of
wolves, showing that its rural population had attained little density.
The entire country had vastly improved in all the elements of
civilization. A national literature had sprung up, crowding out the
reprints of foreign works which had previously ruled the market. Bryant,
Cooper, Dana, Drake, Halleck, and Irving were now re-enforced by writers
like Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Poe, Prescott,
and Whittier. Educational institutions were multiplied and their methods
bettered, The number of newspapers had become enormous. Several
religious journals were established previous to 1830, among them the New
York Observer, which dates from 1820, and the Christian Register, from
1821. Steam printing had been introduced in 1823. The year 1825 saw the
first Sunday paper; it was the New York Sunday Courier. Greeley began
his New York Tribune only in 1841.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
A Pony Express.
By the fourth decade of the century the American character had assumed a
good deal of definiteness and greatly interested foreign travellers.
There was, by those who knew what foreign manners were, much foolish
aping of the same. English visitors noted Brother Jonathan's drawl in
talking, his phlegmatic temperament, keen eye, and blistering
inquisitiveness. Jonathan was a rover and a trader, everywhere at home,
everywhere bent upon the main chance. He ate too rapidly, chewed and
smoked tobacco, and spat indecently. He drank too much. During the first
quarter of the century nearly everyone used liquor, and drunkenness was
shamefully common. Every public entertainment, even if religious, set
out provision of free punch. At hotels, brandy was placed upon the
table, free as water to all. The smaller sects often held preaching
services in bar-rooms for lack of better accommodations. On such
occasions the preacher was not infrequently observed, without affront to
anyone, to refresh himself from behind the bar just before announcing
his text.
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By this time the Methodists and Baptists had become extremely strong in
numbers. In 1833 the Massachusetts constitution was altered, abolishing
obligatory contributions for the support of the ministry of the standing
order. Connecticut had made the same change fifteen years before, in its
constitution of 1818. In many localities the newer denominations,
hitherto sects, were more influential than the old one, and in this
abolition of ecclesiastical taxes they had with them Jews, atheists,
deists, agnostics, and heathen.
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preached far and wide that the world would be destroyed in 1843,
securing multitudes of disciples, who clung to his general belief even
after his prophecy as to the specific date for the final catastrophe was
seen to have failed. Mormonism was also founded, in 1830, and the Book
of Mormon published by Joseph Smith. A church of this order, organized
this year at Manchester, N. Y., removed the next to Kirtland, O., and
thence to Independence, Mo. Driven from here by mob violence, they built
the town of Nauvoo, Ill. Meeting in this place too with what they
regarded persecution, several of their members being prosecuted for
polygamy, they were obliged to migrate to Salt Lake City, where,
however, they were not fully settled until 1848.
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Less wonder, then, at the success of the Moon Hoax, perpetrated in 1835.
It was generally known that Sir John Herschel had gone to the Cape of
Good Hope to erect an observatory. One day the New York Sun came out
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Party spirit sometimes ran terribly high. A New York City election in
1834 was the occasion of a riot between men of the two parties,
disturbances continuing several days. Political meetings were broken up,
and the militia had to be called out to enforce order. Citizens armed
themselves, fearing attacks upon banks and business houses. When it was
found that the Whigs were triumphant in the city, deafening salutes were
fired. Philadelphia Whigs celebrated this victory with a grand barbecue,
attended, it was estimated, by fifty thousand people. The death of
Harrison was malignantly ascribed to overeating in Washington, after his
long experience with insufficient diet in the West. Whigs exulted over
Jackson's cabinet difficulties. Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet," the power
behind the throne, gave umbrage to his official advisers. Duff Green,
editor of the United States Telegraph, the President's "organ," was one
member; Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, and Amos Kendall, first of
Massachusetts, then of Kentucky, were others, these three the most
influential. All had long worked, written, and cheered for Old Hickory.
In return he gave them good places at Washington, and now they enjoyed
dropping in at the White House to take a smoke with the grizzly hero and
help him curse the opposition as foes of "the people."
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When Jackson wrote his foreign message upon the French spoliation
claims, his cabinet were aghast and begged him to soften its tone. Upon
his refusal, it is said, they stole to the printing-office and did it
themselves. But the proofs came back for Jackson's perusal. The lad who
brought them was the late Mr. J. S. Ham, of Providence, R. I. He used to
say that he had never known what profane swearing was till he listened
to General Jackson's comments as those proofs were read.
Jackson and Quincy Adams were personal as well as political foes. When
the President visited Boston, Harvard College bestowed on him the degree
of Doctor of Laws. Adams, one of the overseers, opposed this with all
his might. As "an affectionate child of our Alma Mater, he would not be
present to witness her disgrace in conferring her highest literary
honors upon a barbarian." Subsequently he would refer, with a sneer, to
"Dr. Andrew Jackson." The President's illness at Boston Adams declared
"four-fifths trickery" and the rest mere fatigue. He was like John
Randolph, said Adams, who for forty years was always dying. "He is now
alternately giving out his chronic diarrhoea and making Warren bleed him
for a pleurisy, and posting to Cambridge for a doctorate of laws,
mounting the monument of Bunker's Hill to hear a fulsome address and
receive two cannon-balls from Edward Everett."
A note or two upon costume may not uninterestingly close this chapter.
Enormous bonnets were fashionable about 1830. Ladies also wore Leghorn
hats, with very broad brims rolled up behind, tricked out profusely with
ribbons and artificial flowers. Dress-waists were short and high. Skirts
were short, too, hardly reaching the ankles. Sleeves were of the
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leg-of-mutton fashion, very full above the elbows but tightening toward
the wrist. Gentlemen still dressed for the street not so differently
from the revolutionary style. Walking-coats were of broadcloth, blue,
brown, or green, to suit the taste, with gilt buttons. Bottle-green was
a very stylish color for evening coats. Blue and the gilt buttons for
street wear were, however, beginning to be discarded, Daniel Webster
being one of the last to walk abroad in them. The buff waistcoat, white
cambric cravat, and ruffled shirt still held their own. Collars for full
dress were worn high, covering half the cheek, a fashion which persisted
in parts of the country till 1850 or later.
CHAPTER VIII.
[1840]
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Baltimore, the only one then in America, and Paterson, N. J., began the
manufacture of cotton duck. Patent leather was made in the United States
by 1819. In 1824 Amesbury, Mass., had a water-power manufactory of
flannel. The next year the practice of homoeopathy began in America, and
matches of a rude sort were displacing the old tinder-box. The next
year after this Hartford produced axes and other edged tools.
Lithography, of which there had been specimens so early as 1818, was a
Boston business in 1827. Pittsburgh manufactured damask table linen in
1828. The same year saw paper made from straw, and planing machinery in
operation. The insuring of lives began in this country in 1812.
Trial between Peter Cooper's Locomotive "Tom Thumb" and one of Stockton's
and Stokes' Horse Cars. From "History of the First Locomotive in
America."
The first figured muslin woven by the power-loom in America, and perhaps
in the world, was produced at Central Falls, R. I., in 1829. Calico
printing began at Lowell the same year, also the manufacture of cutlery
at Worcester, of sewing-silk at Mansfield, Conn., of galvanized iron in
New York City. With the new decade chloroform was invented, in 1831,
being first used as a medicine, not as an anaesthetic. Reaping machines
were on trial the same year, and three years later machine-made wood
screws were turned out at Providence. About the same time, 1832, pins
were made by machinery, hosiery was woven by a power-loom process, and
Colt perfected his revolver. In 1837 brass clocks were put upon the
American market, and by 1840 extensively exported. Also in 1837 Nashua
was making machinists' tools. By 1839 the manufacture of iron with hard
coal was a pronounced success. In 1840 daguerreotypes began to appear.
Steam fire-engines were seen the next year.
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So early as 1816 the New York and Philadelphia stages made the distance
from city to city between sun and sun. The National Road from Cumberland
was finished to Wheeling in 1820, having been fourteen years in
construction and costing $17,000,000. It was subsequently extended
westward across Ohio and Indiana. It was thirty-five feet wide,
thoroughly macadamized, and had no grade of above five degrees. Over
parts of this road no less than 150 six-horse teams passed daily,
besides four or five four-horse mail and passenger coaches. In Jackson's
time, when for some months there was talk of war with France and extra
measures were thought proper for assuring the loyalty of Louisiana,
swift mail connections were made with the Mississippi by the National
Road. Its entire length was laid out into sections of sixty-three miles
apiece, each with three boys and nine horses, only six hours and
eighteen minutes being allowed for traversing a section, viz., a rate of
about ten miles an hour. Great men and even presidents travelled by the
public coaches of this road, though many of them used their own
carriages. James K. Polk often made the journey from Nashville to
Washington in his private carriage. Keeping down the Cumberland River to
the Ohio, and up this to Wheeling, he would strike into the National
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Obverse and Reverse of a Ticket used in 1838 on the New York & Harlem
Railroad.
The first omnibus made its appearance in New York in 1830, the name
itself originating from the word painted upon this vehicle. The first
street railway was laid two years later. The era of the stage coach was
at this time beginning to end, that of canals and railroads opening. Yet
in the remoter sections of the country the old coach was destined to
hold its place for decades still. Where roads were fair it would not
uncommonly make one hundred miles between early morning and late
evening, as between Boston and Springfield, Springfield and Albany. So
soon as available the canal packet was a much more easy and elegant
means of travel. The Erie Canal was begun in 1817, finished to Rochester
in 1823, the first boat arriving October 8th. The year 1825 carried it
to Buffalo. The Blackstone Canal, between Worcester and Providence, was
opened its whole length in 1828; the next year many others, as the
Chesapeake and Delaware, the Cumberland and Oxford in Maine, the
Farmington in Connecticut, the Oswego, connecting the Erie Canal with
Lake Ontario, also the Delaware and Hudson, one hundred and eight miles
long, from Honesdale, Pa., to Hudson River. The Welland Canal was
completed in 1830.
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in vain.
The first trip by a locomotive was in 1828, over the Carbondale and
Honesdale route in Pennsylvania. The engine was of English make, and run
by Mr. Horatio Allen, who had had it built. This was a year before the
first steam railroad was opened in England. July 4, 1828, construction
upon the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was begun. It, like the other early
roads, was built of stone cross-ties, with wooden rails topped with
heavy straps of iron. Such ties were soon replaced by wooden ones, as
less likely to be split by frost, but the wooden rail with its iron
strap might be seen on branch lines, for instance, between Monocacy
Bridge and Frederick City, Md., so late as the Civil War.
The first railroad for passengers in this country went into operation
between Charleston and Hamburg, S. C., in 1830. The locomotive had been
gotten up in New York, the first of American make. It had four wheels
and an upright boiler. This year the railroad between Albany and
Schenectady was begun, and fourteen miles of the Baltimore & Ohio opened
for use. In 1831 Philadelphia was joined to Pittsburgh by a line of
communication consisting of a railway to Columbia, a canal thence to
Hollidaysburg, another railway thence over the Alleghanies to Johnstown,
and then on by canal. The railway over the mountains consisted of
inclined planes mounted by the use of stationary engines. It is
interesting to notice the view which universally prevailed at first,
that the locomotive could not climb grades, and that where this was
necessary stationary engines would have to be used. Not till 1836 was it
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From 1832 the railway system grew marvellously. The year 1833 saw
completed the South Carolina Railroad between Charleston and the
Savannah River, one hundred and thirty-six miles. This was the first
railway line in this country to carry the mails, and the longest
continuous one then in the world. Two years later Boston was connected
by railway with Providence, with Lowell, and with Worcester, Baltimore
with Washington, and the New York & Erie commenced. In 1839 Worcester
was joined to Springfield in the same manner, and in 1841 a passenger
could travel by rail from Boston to Rochester, changing cars, however,
at least ten times.
PERIOD III.
CHAPTER I.
[1820]
Slavery would most likely never have imperilled the life of this nation
had it not been for the colossal industrial revolution sketched above.
Cotton had been grown here since, 1621, and some exportation of it is
said to have occurred in 1747. Till nearly 1800 very little had gone
from the United States to England, for by the old process a slave could
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clean but five or six pounds a day. In 1784, an American ship which
brought eight bags to Liverpool was seized, on the ground that so much
could not have been the produce of the United States. Jay's treaty, as
first drawn, consented that no cotton should be exported from America.
It changed the very history of the country when, in 1793, Eli Whitney
invented the saw-gin, by which a slave could clean 1,000 pounds of
cotton per day. Slavery at once ceased to be a passive, innocuous
institution, promising soon to die out, and became a means of gain, to
be upheld and extended in all possible ways. The cotton export, but
189,316 pounds in 1791, and a third less in 1792, rose to 487,600 pounds
in 1793, to 1,610,760 pounds in 1794, to 6,276,300 pounds in 1795, and
to 38,118,041 pounds in 1804. Within five years after Whitney's
invention, cotton displaced indigo as the great southern staple, and the
slave States had become the cotton-field of the world. In 1869 the
export was nearly 1,400,000,000 pounds, worth about $161,500,000.
[Footnote: Johnson, in Lalor's Cyclopaedia, Art. "Slavery."]
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[1831]
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Danger from the blacks necessitated the most rigid laws concerning them.
Time had been when it was thought not dangerous to teach slaves to read.
In 1742 Commissary Garden, of the English Society for Propagating the
Gospel, founded a negro school in Charleston, where slaves were taught
by slave teachers, these last being the society's property. Honest Elias
Neale, the society's catechist in New York, engaged in the same work
there, and afterward catechists were so employed in Philadelphia. That
organization did much to stir up the planters to teach their slaves the
rudiments of Christianity. [Footnote: Eggleston in Century, May, 1888.]
Now, all this was changed. The strictest laws were made to keep every
slave in the most abject ignorance, to prevent their congregating, and
to make it impossible for abolitionists or abolitionist literature or
influence to get at them.
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[1816]
[1839]
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[1835]
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The slave codes of the southern States grew severer every year, as did
legislation against free colored people. Laws were passed rendering
emancipation more difficult and less a blessing when obtained. The
Mississippi and Alabama constitutions, 1817 and 1819 respectively, and
all those in the South arising later, were shaped so as to place general
emancipation beyond the power even of Legislatures. Congress was even
thus early--so it seemed at the North--all too subservient to the
slave-holders, partly through the operation of the three-fifths rule,
partly from fear that opposition would bring disunion, partly in that
ambitious legislators were eager for southern votes. As to the Senate,
the South had taken care, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee having evened
the score, all before 1800, to allow no new northern State to be
admitted unless matched by a southern. In addition to all this, the
North had a vast trade with the South, and northern capitalists held to
an enormous amount mortgages on southern property of all sorts, so that
large and influential classes North had a pecuniary interest in
maintaining at the South both good nature and business prosperity.
CHAPTER II.
"IMMEDIATE ABOLITION"
[1832]
While slavery was thus strengthening itself upon its own soil and in
some respects also at the North, its champions ever more alert and
forward, its old foes asleep, these very facts were provoking thought
about the institution and hostility to it, destined in time to work its
overthrow. Interested people saw that slavery, so aggressive and
defiant, must be fought to be put down, and that if the Constitution was
its bulwark, as all believed, provided a tithe of what the South as well
as the North had said of its evils was true, the whole country, and not
the South only, was guilty in tolerating the curse. In 1821 Lundy began
publishing his Genius of Universal Emancipation, seconded, from 1829, by
the more radical Garrison. In 1831 Garrison founded the Liberator,
whose motto, "immediate and unconditional emancipation," was intended as
a rebuke to the tame policy of the colonizationists. "I am in earnest,"
said the plucky man, when his utterances threatened to cost him his
life, "I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will
not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." These were startling
tones. Had God turned a new prophet loose in the earth?
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The abolition spirit was a part of the general moral and religious
quickening we have mentioned as beginning about 1825, and revealing
itself in revivals, missions, a religious press, and belief in the end
of the world as approaching. The ethical teaching of the great German
philosopher, Emanuel Kant, denouncing all use of man as an instrument,
began to take effect in America through the writings of Coleridge.
Hatred of slavery was gradually intensified and spread. In 1832 rose the
New England Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 the American Society was
organized, with a platform declaring "slavery a crime."
[1833]
organized all over the North, the Underground Railroad was hard worked
in helping fugitives to Canada, and fiery prophets harangued wherever
they could get a hearing, demanding "immediate abolition" in the name of
God.
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[1834-1836]
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freed his slaves. Between 1834 and 1840 there was hardly a place of any
size in the North where an Abolitionist could speak with certain safety.
Wendell Phillip.
[1839-1840]
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The fact that, defying slave-masters and sycophants alike, the cause of
abolition still went on conquering and to conquer, was due much less to
the strength of its arguments and the energy of its agitation than to
the South's wild outcry and preposterous effrontery of demand.
Conservative northerners began to see that, bad as abolitionism might
be, the means proposed for its suppression were worse still, being
absolutely subversive of personal liberty, free speech, and a free
press. More serious was the conviction, which the South's attitude
nursed, that such mortal horror at Abolitionists and their propaganda
could only be explained by some sort of a conviction on the part of the
South itself that the Abolitionists were right, and that slavery was
precisely the heinous and damnable evil they declared it to be. It was
mostly in considering this aspect of the case that the Church and clergy
more and more developed conscience and voice on freedom's side, as
practical allies of abolitionism. In each great denomination the South
had to break off from the North on account of the latter's love to the
black as a human being. Men felt that an institution unable to stand
discussion ought to fall. By 1850 there were few places at the North
where an Abolitionist might not safely speak his mind.
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point of view this question was no less proper than the other: What
right had the South, among much else, to enact laws putting in prison
northern citizens of color absolutely without indictment, when, as
sailors, they touched at southern ports, and keeping them there till
their ships sailed? This outrage had occurred repeatedly. What was
worse, when Messrs. Hoar and Hubbard visited Charleston and New Orleans,
respectively, to bring amicable suits that should go to the Supreme
Court and there decide the legality of such detention, they were obliged
to withdraw to escape personal violence.
It was said that the North must bear these incidents of slavery, so
obnoxious to it, in deference to our complex political system. Yes, but
it was equally the South's duty to bear the, to it, obnoxious incidents
of freedom. Southern men seem never to have thought of this. Doubtless,
as emancipation in any style would have afflicted it, the South could
not but account all incitements thereto as hardships; but the North must
have suffered hardships, if less gross and tangible, yet more real and
galling, had it acceded to southern wishes touching liberty of person,
speech, and the press. That at the North which offended the South was of
the very soul and essence of free government; that at the South which
aggrieved the North was, however important, certainly somewhat less
essential. Manifestly, considerations other than legal or constitutional
needed to be invoked in order to a decision of the case upon its merits,
and these, had they been judicially weighed, must, it would seem, all
have told powerfully against slavery. Not to raise the question whether
the black was a man, with the inalienable rights mentioned in the
Declaration of Independence, the South's own economic and moral weal,
and further--what one would suppose should alone have determined the
question--its social peace and political stability loudly demanded
every possible effort and device for the extirpation of slavery. That
this would have been difficult all must admit; that it was intrinsically
possible the examples of Cuba and Brazil since sufficiently prove.
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CHAPTER III.
[1836]
[1845]
Not only did the Texans almost to a man wish annexation to our Union,
but, as we have seen, the dominant wing of the democratic party in the
Union itself was bent upon the same, forcing a demand for this into
their national platform in 1840. Van Buren did not favor it, which was
the sole reason why he forfeited to Polk the democratic nomination in
1844. Polk was elected by free-soil votes cast for Birney, which, had
Clay received them, would have carried New York and Michigan for him and
thus elected him; but the result was hailed as indorsing annexation.
Calhoun, Tyler's Secretary of State, more influential than any other one
man in bringing it about, therefore now advocated it more zealously than
ever. Calhoun's purpose in this was to balance the immense growth of the
North by adding to southern territory Texas, which would of course
become a slave State, and perhaps in time make several States. As the
war progressed he grew moderate, out of fear that the South's show of
territorial greed would give the North just excuse for sectional
measures.
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Henry Clay, with nearly the entire Whig Party, from the first opposed
the Tyler-Calhoun programme. Clay's own reason for this, as his
memorable Lexington speech in 1847 disclosed, was that the United States
would be looked upon "as actuated by a spirit of rapacity and an
inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement." His party as a whole
dreaded more the increment which would come to the slave power. After
much discussion in Congress, Texas was annexed to the Union on January
25, 1845, just previous to Polk's accession. June 18th, the Texan
Congress unanimously assented, its act being ratified July 4th by a
popular convention. Thus were added to the United States 376,133 square
miles of territory.
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The all-absorbing question now was where Texas ended: at the Nueces, as
Mexico declared, or at the Rio Grande, as Texas itself had maintained,
insisting upon that stream as of old the bourne between Spanish America
and the French Louisiana. Mexico, proud, had recognized neither the
independence of Texas nor its annexation by the United States, yet would
probably have agreed to both as preferable to war, had the alternative
been allowed. To be sure, she was dilatory in settling admitted claims
for certain depredations upon our commerce, threatened to take the
annexation as a casus belli, withdrew her envoy and declined to accept
Slidell as ours, and precipitated the first actual bloodshed. Yet war
might have been averted, and our Government, not Mexico's, was to blame
for the contrary result. Slidell played the bully, the navy threatened
the coast, our wholly deficient title, through Texas, to the
Nueces-Rio-Grande tract was assumed without the slightest ado to be
good, and when General Arista, having crossed the river in Taylor's
vicinity, repelled the latter's attack upon him, the President, followed
by Congress, falsely alleged war to exist "by act of the Republic of
Mexico."
[1846]
During most of 1845, General Zachary Taylor was at Corpus Christi on the
west bank of the Nueces, in command of 3,600 men. The first aggressive
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[1847]
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command. Taylor was a Whig, and the Whigs whispered that his martial
deeds were making the democratic cabinet dread him as a presidential
candidate. But Scott was a Whig, too, and if there was anything in the
surmise, his victorious march must have given Polk's political household
additional food for reflection. Scott's plan was to reduce Vera Cruz,
and thence march to the Mexican capital, two hundred miles away, by the
quickest route. Vera Cruz capitulated March 27, 1847.
Scott straightway struck out for the interior. He was bloodily opposed
at Cerro Gordo, April 18th, and at Jalapa, but he made quick work of the
enemy at both these places. In the latter city, after his victory, he
awaited promised re-enforcements. When the last of these had arrived,
August 6th, under General Franklin Pierce, so that he could muster about
14,000 men, he advanced again. August 10th the Americans were in sight
of the City of Mexico. This was a natural stronghold, and art had added
to its strength in every possible way. Except on the south and west it
was nearly inaccessible if defended with any spirit. Scott of course
directed his attack toward the west and south sides of the city. The
first battle in the environs of the capital was fiercely fought near the
village of Contreras, and proved an overwhelming defeat for the
Mexicans. Two thousand were killed or wounded, while nearly 1,000,
including four generals, were captured, together with a large quantity
of stores and ammunition. The American loss was only 60 killed and
wounded.
The survivors fled to Churubusco, farther toward the city, where, with
every advantage of position, Santa Anna had united his forces for a
final stand. An old stone convent, which our artillery could not reach
till late in the action, was utilized as a barricade, and from this the
Mexicans poured a most deadly fire upon their assailants. The Americans
were victorious, as usual, but their loss was fearful, 1,000 being
killed or wounded, including 76 officers. A truce to last a fortnight
was now agreed upon, but Scott, seeing that the Mexicans were taking
advantage of it to strengthen their fortifications, did not wait so
long. He now had about 8,500 men fit for duty, and sixty-eight guns.
Hostilities were renewed September 7th, by the storm and capture,
costing nearly 800 men, of Molino del Rey, or "King's Mill," a mile and
a half from the city.
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sides could be scaled. But the stronghold was the key to the city, and
after surveying the situation, a council of war decided that it must be
taken. Two picked American detachments, one from the west, one from the
south, pushed up the rugged steeps in face of a withering fire. The
rock-walls to the base of the castle had to be mounted by ladders. This
was successfully accomplished; the enemy were driven from the building
back into the city, and the castle and grounds occupied by our troops. A
large number of fugitives were cut off by a force sent around to the
north.
[1848]
To pierce the city was even now by no means easy. The approach was by
two roads, one entering the Belen gate, the other the San Cosme. General
Quitman advanced toward the Belen, but at the entrance was stopped by a
destructive cannonade from the citadel itself. Those fighting their way
toward the San Cosme succeeded in entering the city, Lieutenant U. S.
Grant making his mark in the gallant work of this day. The city was
evacuated that night, and on the 15th of September, 1847, was fully in
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Inseparable from the politics of the Mexican War is the Oregon question,
since Oregon's re-occupation and "fifty-four forty or fight" had been
democratic cries for securing to Polk west-northern votes in 1844. We
had, however, no valid claim so far north, except against Russia--by the
treaty of 1824. The Louisiana purchase, indeed, had vested us with
whatever--very dubious--rights France had upon the Pacific, and the
Florida treaty of 1819 gave us the far better title of Spain to the
coast north of 42 degrees. This treaty, with Gray's discovery of the
Columbia in 1792, Lewis and Clarke's official explorations of the
Columbia valley in 1804-05-06, England's retrocession, in 1818, of
Astoria, captured during the War of 1812, and extensive actual
settlements upon the river by American citizens from 1832 on, made our
claim perfect up to 49 degrees at least. This parallel the convention
with Great Britain in 1818 had already fixed as our northern line from
the Lake of Woods to the Rocky Mountains. Between this and 54 degrees 40
minutes, England's title, from exploration and settlement, was superior
to ours, which was based upon alleged old Spanish discovery. The same
convention of 1818, renewed in 1827, opened the Oregon country to
occupation by settlers from both nations. Increase of immigration
rendering a fixing of jurisdictions imperative, England pressed for the
line of the Columbia below its intersection of the forty-ninth parallel.
We had twice offered to settle upon 49 degrees, which limit the rapid
growth of our population in the region induced England in 1836 to
accept. Whether Polk's blustering demand for "all Oregon," which came
near bringing on war with England, and his much condemned recession
later, were mere opportunist acts, is still a question. Many consider
them pieces of a deep-laid policy by Polk to tole Mexico to war in hope
of England's aid, then, suddenly pacifying England, to devour Mexico at
his leisure.
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CHAPTER IV.
[1846]
One of the campaigns at the beginning of the Mexican War was that of
General Stephen W. Kearney, from Fort Leavenworth, against New Mexico.
It was opened in May, 1846. He invaded the country without much
opposition, arrived at Santa Fe August 18th, having marched 873 miles,
declared the inhabitants free from all allegiance to Mexico, and formed
a territorial government over them as United States subjects.
Captain John C. Fremont had previously, but in the same year, 1846, been
sent to California at the head of an exploring expedition, and in May he
was notified to remain in the country in anticipation of hostilities. On
June 15th he captured Samona. Meanwhile, Commodore Sloat was erecting
our flag over the towns on the coast. In July Sloat was superseded by
Commodore Stockton, who routed the Mexican commander, De Castro, at Los
Angeles, joined Fremont, and on August 13th seized Monterey, the then
capital. The two commanders now placed themselves at the head of a
provisional government for California.
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[1848-1849]
In 1848, on the same day and almost at the same hour when the peace of
Guadalupe Hidalgo was concluded, gold was discovered in California. It
was on the land of one Sutter, a Swiss settler in the Sacramento Valley,
as some workmen were opening a flume for a mill. In three months over
4,000 persons were there, digging for gold with great success. By July,
1849, it is thought, 15,000 had arrived. Nearly all were forced to live
in booths, tents, log huts, and under the open sky. The sparse
population previously on the ground left off farming and grazing and
opened mines. People became insane for gold. Immigrants soon came in
immense hordes. In 1846, aside from roving Indians, California had
numbered not much over 15,000 inhabitants. By 1850, it seems certain
that the territory contained no fewer than 92,597. The new-comers were
from almost every land and clime--Mexico, South America, the Sandwich
Islands, China--though, of course, most were Americans. The bulk of
these hailed from the Northwest and the Northeast. To this land of
promise the sturdy pioneers from the Mississippi Valley found their way
on foot, on horseback, or in wagons, over the Rocky Mountains and the
Sierras, following trails previously untrodden by civilized man. Those
from the East made long detours around Cape Horn or across the Isthmus
of Panama.
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The yield of gold from the virgin placers was enormous, a laborer's
average the first season being perhaps an ounce a day, though many made
much more. During the first two years about $40,000,000 worth of gold
was extracted. According to careful estimates the gold yield of the
United States, mostly from California, which had been only $890,000 in
1847, increased to $10,000,000 in 1848, to $40,000,000 in 1849, to
$50,000,000 in 1850, to $55,000,000 in 1851, to $60,000,000 in 1852, and
in 1853 to $65,000,000.
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adjoining land, giving up only when others came in numbers too strong
for them. Officers were elected and new customs sanctioned as they were
needed. Partnerships were sacredly maintained, yet by no other law than
that of the camp. Crimes against property and life seem to have been
infrequent at first, but the unparalleled wealth toled in and developed
a criminal class, which the rudimentary government could not control.
San Francisco formed in 1851 a vigilance committee of citizens, by which
crimes could be more summarily and surely punished. The pioneer banking
house in California began business at San Francisco in January, 1849.
The same month saw the first frame house on the Sacramento, near
Sutter's Fort.
The election of 1848 went for the Whigs, and the next March 4th, General
Taylor became President. Though a southerner and a slave-holder, he was
moderate and a true patriot. So rapid had been the influx into
California that the Territory needed a stable government. Accordingly,
one of Taylor's first acts as President was to urge California to apply
for admission to statehood. General Riley, military governor, at once
called a convention, which, sitting from September 1st to October 13th,
framed a constitution and made request that California be taken into the
Union. This constitution prohibited slavery, and thus a new firebrand
was tossed into the combustible material with which the political
situation abounded. By this time nearly all the friends of freedom were
for the proviso, but its enemies as well had greatly increased. The
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[1850]
Resort was now had again to the old, illusive device of compromise, Clay
being the leader as usual. He brought forward his "Omnibus Bill," so
called because it threw a sop to everybody. It failed to pass as a
single measure, but was broken up and enacted piecemeal. Stubborn was
the fight. Radicals of the one part would consent to nothing short of
extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific; those of the
other stood solidly for the unmodified proviso.
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Millard Fillmore.
From a painting by Carpenter in 1853, at the City Hall, New York.
The country's growth made escape from bondage continually easier and
easier. Once across the border a runaway was sure to find many friends
and few enemies. Openly, or, if this was required, by stealth, he was
passed quickly along to the Canada line. Between 1830 and 1860 over
30,000 slaves are estimated to have taken refuge in Canada. By 1850,
probably no less than 20,000 had found homes in the free States. The new
law moved many of these across into the British dominions. It was hence
increasingly difficult for the slave-owner to recover stray property.
All possible legal obstructions were placed in his way, and when these
failed he was likely still to be opposed by a mob which might prove too
powerful for the marshal and any posse which he could gather.
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In Boston, when a slave named Shadrach was arrested, his friends made a
sudden dash, rescued him from the officers and freed him. With Simms the
same was attempted, but in vain. The removal of Anthony Burns from that
city in 1855 was possible only by escorting him down State Street to the
revenue cutter in waiting, inside a dense hollow square of United States
artillerymen and marines, with the whole city's militia under arms and
at hand. Business houses as well as residences were closed and draped in
mourning. It was an indignity which Massachusetts never forgot. At
Alton, Ill., slave-hunters seized a respectable colored woman, long
resident there, who fully believed herself free. She was surrounded by
an infuriated company of citizens, and would have been wrenched from her
captors' clutch had not they, in their terror, offered to sell her back
into freedom. The needed $1,200 was raised in a few minutes, and the
agonized creature restored to her family. Judge Davis, whom the evidence
had compelled to deliver the woman, on rendering the sentence resigned
his commission, declaring: "The law gives you your victim. Thank it and
not me, and may God have mercy on your sinful souls."
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CHAPTER V.
[1850-1854]
The measures of 1850 proved anything but the "finality" upon slavery
discussion which both parties, the Whigs as loudly as the Democrats,
promised and insisted that they should be. Elated by its victory in
1850, and also by that of 1852, when the anti-slavery sentiment of
northern Whigs drove so many of their old southern allies to vote for
Pierce, giving him his triumphant election, the slavocracy in 1854
proceeded in its work of suicide to undo the sacred Missouri Compromise
of 1820. Douglas, the ablest northern Democrat, led in this, succeeding,
as official pacificator between North and South, somewhat to the office
of Clay, who had died June 29, 1852. The aim of most who were with him
was to make Kansas-Nebraska slave soil, but we may believe that Douglas
himself cherished the hope and conviction that freedom was its destiny.
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But the hint was taken, and on January 16th notice given of intention to
move an out-and-out abrogation of the Missouri Compromise. Such
abrogation was at once incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska bill reported
by Douglas, January 23, 1854. This separated Kansas from Nebraska, and
the subsequent struggle raged in reference to Kansas alone. The bill
erroneously declared it established by the acts of 1850 that "all
questions as to slavery in the Territories," no less than in the States
which should grow out of them, were to be left to the residents, subject
to appeal to the United States courts. It passed both houses by good
majorities and was signed by President Pierce May 30th. Its animus
appeared from the loss in the Senate of an amendment, moved by S. P.
Chase, of Ohio, allowing the Territory to prohibit slavery.
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Franklin Pierce.
From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery.
Thus was first voiced by a public authority Judge Douglas's new and
taking heresy of "squatter sovereignty," that Congress, though
possessing by Article IV., Section iii., Clause 2 of the Constitution,
general authority over the Territories, is not permitted to touch
slavery there, but must leave it for each territorial populace "to vote
up or vote down." At the South this doctrine of Douglas's was dubbed
"nonintervention," and its real aim to secure Kansas a pro-slavery
character avowed. It was consequently popular there as useful toward the
repeal, although repudiated the instant its working bade fair to render
Kansas free.
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Stephen A. Douglas.
[1855]
This was soon the prospect. Organizations had been formed to aid
anti-slavery emigrants from the northern States to Kansas. The first was
the Kansas Aid Society, another a Massachusetts corporation entitled the
New England Emigrant Aid Society. There were others still. Kansas began
to fill up with settlers of strong northern sympathies. They were in
real minority at the congressional election of November, 1854, and in
apparent minority at the territorial election the next March. The vote
against them on the last occasion, however, was largely deposited by
Missourians who came across the border on election day, voted, and
returned. This was demonstrated by the fact that there were but 2,905
legal voters in the Territory at the time, while 5,427 votes were cast
for the pro-slavery candidates alone. These early successes gave the
pro-slavery party and government in Kansas great vantage in the
subsequent congressional contest. The first Legislature convened at
Pawnee, July 2, 1855, enacted the slave laws of Missouri, and ordered
that for two years all state officers should be appointed by legislative
authority, and no man vote in the Territory who would not swear to
support the fugitive slave law.
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1855, formed the Topeka constitution, which was adopted December 14th,
only forty-six votes being polled against it. This showed that
pro-slavery men abstained from voting. January 15, 1856, an election was
held under this constitution for state officers, a state legislature,
and a representative in Congress. The House agreed, July 3d, by one
majority, to admit Kansas with the Topeka constitution, but the Senate
refused. The Topeka Legislature assembled July 4th, but was dispersed by
United States troops.
[1856-1857]
This was done under command from Washington. President Pierce, backed by
the Senate with its steady pro-slavery majority, was resolved at all
hazards to recognize the pro-slavery authorities of Kansas and no other,
and, as it seemed, to force it to become a slave State; but fortunately
the House had an anti-slavery majority which prevented this. The friends
of freedom in Kansas had also on their side the history that was all
this time making in Kansas itself. During the summer of 1856 that
Territory was a theatre of constant war. Men were murdered, towns
sacked. Both sides were guilty of violence, but the free-state party
confessedly much the less so, having far the better cause. Nearly all
admitted that this party was in the majority. Even the governors, all
Democrats, appointed by Pierce, acknowledged this, some of them, to all
appearance, being removed as a punishment for the admission. Governor
Geary, in office from September, 1856, to March, 1857, and Governor
Walker, in office from May, 1857, were just and able men, and their
decisions, in most things favorable to the free-state cause, had much
weight with the country.
Walker's influence in the Territory led the free-state men to take part
in the territorial election of October, 1857, where they were entirely
triumphant. But the old, pro-slavery Legislature had called a
constitutional convention, which met at Lecompton, September, 1857, and
passed the Lecompton constitution. This constitution sanctioned slavery
and provided against its own submission to popular vote. It ordained
that only its provision in favor of slavery should be so submitted. This
pro-slavery clause was adopted, but only because the free-state men
would not vote. The Topeka Legislature submitted the whole constitution
to popular vote, when it was overwhelmingly rejected. The President and
Senate, however, urged statehood under the Lecompton constitution,
although popular votes in Kansas twice more, April, 1858, and March,
1859, had adopted constitutions prohibiting slavery, the latter being
that of Wyandotte. But the House still stood firm. Kansas was not
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admitted to the Union till January 29, 1861, when her chief foes in the
United States Senate had seceded from the Union. She came in with the
Wyandotte constitution and hence as a free State.
It was during the debate upon Kansas affairs in 1856 that Preston S.
Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly
attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon
the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but
unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted
severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State.
This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the
Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon
him with a heavy cane, inflicting injuries from which Sumner never
recovered, and which for four years unfitted him for his senatorial
duties. Sumner's colleague, Henry Wilson, in an address to the Senate,
characterized the assault as it deserved. He was challenged by Brooks,
but refused to fight on the ground that duelling was part of the
barbarism which Brooks had shown in caning Sumner. Anson Burlingame,
representative from Massachusetts, who had publicly denounced the
caning, was challenged by Brooks and accepted the challenge, but, as he
named Canada for the place of meeting, Brooks declined to fight him for
the ostensible reason that the state of feeling in the North would
endanger his life upon the journey. A vote to expel Brooks had a
majority in the House, though not the necessary two-thirds. He resigned,
but was at once re-elected by his South Carolina constituency.
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Charles Sumner.
While the fierce Kansas controversy had been raging, the South had grown
cold toward the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, and had
gradually adopted another view based upon Calhoun's teachings. This was
to the effect that Congress, not under Article IV., section iii., clause
2, but merely as the agent of national sovereignty, rightfully
legislates for the Territories in all things, yet, in order to carry out
the constitutional equality of the States in the Territories, is obliged
to treat slaves found there precisely like any other property. If one
citizen wishes to hold slaves, all the rest opposing, the general
Government must support him. It is obvious how antagonistic this thought
was to that of Douglas, since, according to the latter, a majority of
the inhabitants in a Territory could elect to exclude slavery as well as
to establish it.
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whipped by his master, he prosecuted him for assault. The decision was
in his favor, but was reversed when appeal was taken to the Missouri
Supreme Court. Dred Scott was now sold to one Sandford, of New York. Him
also he prosecuted for assault, but as he and Sandford belonged to
different States this suit went to the United States Circuit Court.
Sandford pleaded that this lacked jurisdiction, as the plaintiff was not
a citizen of Missouri but a slave.
It was this last issue which made the case immortal. The Circuit Court
having decided in the defendant's favor, the plaintiff took an appeal to
the Supreme Court. Here the verdict was against the citizenship of the
negro, and therefore against the jurisdiction of the court below. The
upper court did not stop with this simple dictum, hard and dubious as it
was, but proceeded to lay down as law an astounding course of
pro-slavery reasoning. In this it confined the ordinance of 1787 to the
old northwestern territory, declared the Missouri Compromise and all
other legislation against slavery in Territories unconstitutional, and
the slave character portable not only into all the Territories but into
all the States as well, slavery having everywhere all presupposition in
its favor and freedom being on the defensive. The denial of Scott's
citizenship was based solely upon his African descent, the inevitable
implication being that no man of African blood could be an American
citizen.
The pith of this counter theory was that slaves were property not by
moral, natural, or common law, but only by state law, that hence
freedom, not slavery, was the heart and universal presupposition of our
government, and that slavery, not freedom, was bound to show reasons for
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its existence anywhere. This being so, while Calhoun and Taney were
right as against Douglas in ascribing to Congress all power over the
Territories, it was as impossible to find slaves in any United States
Territory as to find a king there. Slaves taken into Territories
therefore became free. Slaves taken into any free State became free.
Slaves carried from a slave State on to the high seas became free. Even
the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution must be applied in the way
least favorable to slavery.
On the other hand Douglas was right in his view that citizens and not
States were the partners in the Territories. As to the assertion of
incompatibility between citizenship and African blood, it would not
stand historical examination a moment. If it was true that the framers
of the Constitution did not consciously include colored persons in the
"ourselves and our posterity" for whom they purposed the "Blessings of
Liberty," neither did they consciously exclude, as is clear from the
fact that nearly everyone of them expected blacks some time to be free.
CHAPTER VI.
[1841]
The Democratic Party was predominantly southern, the Whig northern. Both
sought to be of national breadth, but the democratic with much the
better success. Democracy would not give up its northern vote nor the
Whigs their southern; but a better party fealty, due to a longer and
prouder party history, rendered the Democrats far the more independent
and bold in the treatment of their out-lying wing. The consequence was
that while its rank and file at the North never loved slavery, they
tolerated it and became its apologists in a way to make the party as a
whole not only in appearance but in effect the pliant organ of the
slavocracy. This status became more pronounced with the progress of the
controversy and of the South's self-assertion. It was real under
Jackson, rigid under Van Buren, manifest and almost avowed under Polk,
Pierce, and Buchanan.
Whig temper toward slavery was throughout the North much better, but
whig party action was little better. Fear of losing southern supporters
permanently forbade all frank enlistment by the Whig Party for freedom.
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The mighty leaders, Adams, Webster, even Clay, were well inclined, and
the party, as such, was at the South persistently accused of alliance
with the Abolitionists. This was untrue. Abolitionists, Liberal Party
men, and Free-soilers oftener voted with Democrats than with Whigs. Clay
complained once that Abolitionists denounced him as a slave-holder,
slave-holders as an Abolitionist, while both voted for Van Buren.
Compromise was the bane of this party as of the other; and each of the
resplendent chieftains named at one time or another seemed so reverent
to Belial that the record is painful reading.
When in 1841 the ship Creole sailed from Richmond with one hundred and
thirty-five slaves on board bound for the southern market, and one
Madison Washington, a recovered runaway on board, headed a dash upon
captain and crew, got possession of the vessel and took her into New
Providence, Clay was as loud as Calhoun or any southern senator in
demanding of the English Government the return of these slaves to
bondage or, at least, that of "the mutineers," as they were called.
Webster, Secretary of State at the time, instructed Edward Everett, our
English minister, to insist upon this, his arguments being sound and his
tone emphatic enough to please Mr. Calhoun. This was the time when
Giddings, of Ohio, brought into the House his resolutions to the effect
that slavery was a state institution only, and that hence any slave
carried on to the open ocean or to any other locality where only
national law prevailed, was free. He was censured in the House by a
large majority and resigned, but his Ohio constituency immediately
re-elected him.
[1836-1844]
Up to this time Giddings and Adams were the only pronounced anti-slavery
men in that body. Adams had acquiesced in the Missouri Compromise, but
all his subsequent career, especially his course in the House of
Representatives after 1830, is not only creditable to him so far as the
slavery question is concerned, but registers him as one of the most
influential opponents of slavery in our history. Refusing to be classed
with the Abolitionists, he was, in effect, the most efficient
Abolitionist of them all.
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Mr. Adams was from the first the resolute and uncompromising foe of the
gag policy. Wagon-loads of petitions came to him to offer, among them
one for his own expulsion from the House and one to dissolve the Union,
and he presented all.
[1850]
But a plenitude of Whigs, not all southern, voted for each of these
gags. The worst one of all was moved by a Whig. The XXVIIth Congress,
strongly whig, voted to retain the gag, which it was left for the
XXVIIIth, strongly democratic, finally to repeal. At the South, slavery
more and more overbore party feeling. Said Dixon, a Kentucky Whig, in
1854, "Upon the question of slavery I know no Whiggery, no Democracy--I
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Thomas H. Benton.
Had the Whig Party, while in power from 1849 to 1853, been brave enough
boldly to assume a rational anti-slavery attitude, though it might have
been defeated, as it was in 1852, it would have had a future. The chance
passed unimproved. The temporizing attitude of the party's then leaders
and the known pro-slavery feeling of most of its southern
members--twelve Whigs voting in the House for the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise--proved deadly to the organization, its faithful old
battalions going over in the South to the Democrats, in the North to the
Republicans.
Many Whigs took the latter course by a circuitous route. Ever since the
alien and sedition laws, cry had been raised at intervals against the
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Americanism had its greatest run after 1850, when the Whigs saw their
organization going to pieces, and, mistakenly in part, attributed
democratic success to the immigrant vote. A secret fraternity arose,
called the "Know-nothings," from "I don't know," the ever-repeated reply
of its members to inquiry about its nature and doings. "America for
Americans" was their cry, and they proposed to "put none but Americans
on guard." At first pursuing their aims through silent manipulation of
the old parties, by 1854 the Know-nothings swung out as a third party.
From this date they lustily competed with the Republicans for the hosts
of whig and democratic stragglers jostled from their old ranks by the
omnibus bill legislation, the Kansas-Nebraska act, and the "Crime
against Kansas" committed by Pierce and his slavocratic Senate. In 1855
this party assumed national proportions, and worried seasoned
politicians not a little; but having crystallized around no living
issue, like that which nerved Republicanism, it fell like a
rocket-stick, its sparks going over to make redder still republican
fires. Henry Wilson became a Republican from the status of a
Know-nothing; so did Banks, Colfax, and a score of others subsequently
eminent among their new associates. Some had of old been Democrats,
though most had been Whigs.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1856-1860]
This particular breach was pretty well healed, but the evil survived.
Then came the compromise repeal, wherein the Democracy stood by the
South in casting to the winds, the moment it promised to be of service
to the North, a solemn bargain which had yielded the South Florida,
Arkansas, and Missouri as slave States. Northern Democrats, especially
in the rural parts, unwilling longer to serve slavery, drew off from the
party in increasing numbers. Northern States one by one passed to the
opposition. The whole of New England had gone over in 1856, also New
York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa--Buchanan having six votes
outside those of Pennsylvania, where he won, as many believed, by unfair
means. In 1860, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Indiana,
Minnesota, and Oregon crossed to the same side.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CRISIS
[1850]
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There were also plans for foreign conquest in slavery's behalf, which
received countenance from public and even from national authorities. The
idea seemed to be that the victory and territorial enlargement
consequent upon the Mexican War might be repeated in Central America and
Cuba. The efforts of Lopez in 1850 and 1851 to conquer Cuba with aid
from the United States had indeed been brought to an end through this
adventurer's execution in the latter year by the Cuban authorities.
Pierce put forth a proclamation in 1854, warning American citizens
against like attempts in future. Defying this, the next year William
Walker headed a filibustering expedition to the Pacific coast of
Nicaragua, conquering the capital of that state and setting up a
government which proceeded to re-establish slavery and invite
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1852]
[1854]
We have seen the feeble efforts of the old Liberty Party to make head
against slavery, Birney and Earle being its candidates in 1840, Birney
and Morris in 1844. In 1848 these "conscience Free-soilers" were
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1856]
What quickened this drooping movement into new and triumphant life was
the revocation of the Missouri Compromise. This rallied to the free-soil
standard nearly all the northern Whigs, many old Barn-burners who since
1848 had returned to the democratic fold, and vast numbers of other
anti-Lecompton Democrats. Most of the Know-nothings throughout the North
also joined it, while of course it had in all its anti-slavery measures
the hearty co-operation, directly political or other, of the
Abolitionists. The first national convention of this new party,
fortunately styling itself "Republican," was in 1856. Whig doctrine
early appeared in the party by the demand for protection, internal
improvements, and a national banking system; in fact, Republicanism may
be said to have received nearly entire the whig mantle, as the Whigs did
that of Federalism.
But the living soul and integrating idea of the party was new, the rigid
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
[1858]
Out of this conviction, apparently, grew the John Brown raid into
Virginia in 1858. John Brown was an enthusiast, whom sufferings from the
Border Ruffians in Kansas, where one of his sons had been atrociously
murdered and another driven to insanity by cruel treatment as a
prisoner, had frenzied in his opposition to slavery. He had dedicated
himself to its extirpation. The intrepid old man formed the purpose of
invading Virginia, and of placing himself with a few white allies at the
head of a slave insurrection that should sweep the State. Friends in
the North had contributed money for the purchase of arms, and on October
16th, Brown, with fourteen white men and four negroes, seized the United
States Armory at Harper's Ferry. He stopped the railway trains, freed
some slaves, and assumed to rule the town. United States troops were at
once despatched to the scene, when the misguided hero, with his devoted
band, fortified themselves in the engine house, surrendering only after
thirteen of them, including two of Brown's sons, were killed or mortally
wounded. Brown and the other survivors were soon tried, convicted, and
hung. This insane attempt was deprecated by nearly all of all parties;
but the fate of Brown, with his resolute bravery, begot him large
sympathy, and the false assumption of the South that he really
represented northern feeling made his deed helpful to the anti-slavery
movement, of which the Republican Party was now the centre.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
John Brown.
[1860]
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
if no, Illinois will not again elect him senator." Douglas replied in
the affirmative, and, as his antagonist prophesied, became in the South
a doomed man.
The schism was fully apparent when, on April 23d, the democratic
convention of 1860 began its session in Charleston. A majority of the
delegates were for Douglas, voting down the Calhoun-Taney view, though
willing that the party should bind itself to obey the Dred Scott
decision. When the Douglas platform was adopted the delegations from
Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas, with parts of those from
Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware, seceded.
Douglas had a majority vote as presidential candidate, but not
two-thirds. The convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore June 18th, and
when it met there Douglas was nominated by the requisite two-thirds
vote. The seceders met at Richmond, June 11th, where, imitating some new
seceders at Baltimore they nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The
so-called Constitutional Union Party also had in the field its ticket,
Bell and Everett, which secured votes from a few persistent Whigs and
Know-nothings still foolish enough to suppose that further clash between
the powers of slavery and freedom could somehow be averted.
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William H. Seward.
From a photograph by Brady.
CHAPTER VIII.
MATERIAL PROGRESS
[1860]
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The great West continued to come under the hand of civilization. Between
1850 and 1860 our centre of population made a longer stride westward
than during any other decade--from east of the meridian of Parkersburg,
W. Va., to the meridian of Chillicothe, O. Florida and Texas having been
admitted to statehood in 1845, Iowa followed next year, Wisconsin in
1848, California in 1850, Minnesota, which had been an organized
Territory since 1849, in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. Kansas, Nebraska,
Utah, and Washington Territories were organized before 1860. By this
date there were settlements far up the Rio Grande. The Pacific coast was
sought for lands and homes as well as for gold. Fremont's expeditions in
1842, 1844, and 1848 had done much to show people the way thither. In
1853 the Government sent out four different parties to survey suitable
routes for a Pacific railway, a work followed up by three other parties
the next summer. The settlements in Oregon had, by 1845, in places
become dense.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Elias Howe.
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The old West prospered, notwithstanding the drain which it, in common
with the East, experienced in favor of parts farther toward the setting
sun. The first lake propeller was launched at Cleveland in 1847. The
same year the Tribune was started in Chicago. In 1850 the city had its
theatre and its board of trade. The Chicago streets began this year to
be lighted with gas. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built
in 1855 at Minneapolis; that at Rock Island, 1,582 feet long, in 1856.
The Niagara suspension bridge was finished in 1855.
The increase of railways did not at once end the opening of canals. The
Miami Canal, between Cincinnati and Toledo, 215 miles, begun in 1825,
was finished in 1843, and the Wabash and Erie, between Evansville and
Toledo, opened in 1851; but the Middlesex Canal in Massachusetts was, in
1853, abandoned and filled up from the loss of its business to
railroads. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company purchased from the
State the canal and railway line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and
soon after extended the railway portion to cover the whole. A traveller
from Boston to the West could get to Rochester by rail in 1841. Next
year he could go on to Buffalo by the same means. In 1842, Augusta, Ga.,
was connected by rail with Atlanta, Savannah with Macon, and the Boston
& Maine Railway finished to Berwick.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
S. F. B. Morse.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Amos Kendall then engaged as Morse's agent, and by dint of great effort
secured subscriptions for a line from New York to Philadelphia, being
obliged to sell the shares for one-half their face value. Incorporation
was secured from the Maryland Legislature, under the first American
charter, for the telegraph business. The line was completed in 1845 to
the Hudson opposite the upper end of Manhattan Island, and an effort
made to insulate the wire and connect with the city along the bottom of
the river. This failed, and for some time messages had to be taken over
in boats. In 1846 the wire was carried on to Baltimore. In the same year
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were connected by telegraph, New York and
Albany, New York and Boston, Boston and Buffalo. The first line in
California was erected in 1853.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Still more wonderful, ocean telegraphy was broached and made successful
during these years. Tentative efforts to operate the current under water
were made between Governor's Island and New York City so early as 1842.
A copper wire was used, insulated with hemp string coated with India
rubber and pitch. In 1846 a similar arrangement was encased in lead
pipe. This device failed, and sub-aqueous telegraphy seems to have been
for the time given up.
In 1854 Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, with Peter Cooper and other
capitalists of that city, organized the New York, Newfoundland, and
London Telegraph Company, stock a million and a half dollars, and began
plans to connect New York with St. Johns, Newfoundland, by a cable under
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Little progress was made, however, till 1857,
when it was attempted to lay a cable across the Atlantic from
Newfoundland. The paying out was begun at Queenstown and proceeded
successfully until three hundred and thirty-five miles had been laid,
when the cable parted. Nothing more was done till the next year in June.
Then, in 1858, after several more unsuccessful efforts, the two
continents were successfully joined. The two ships containing the cable
met in mid-ocean, where it was spliced and the paying out begun in each
direction. The one reached Newfoundland the same day, August 5th, on
which the other reached Valencia, Ireland. No break had occurred, and
after the necessary arrangements had been effected, the first message
was transmitted on August 16th. It was from the Queen of Great Britain
to the President of the United States, and read, "Glory to God in the
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Street railways became common in our largest cities before 1860, the
first in New England, that between Boston and Cambridge, dating from
1856. Sleeping-cars began to be used in 1858. The express business went
on developing, being opened westward from Buffalo first in 1845. A steam
fire-engine was tried in New York in 1841, but the invention was
successful only in 1853. Baltimore used one in 1858. Goodyear
triumphantly vulcanized rubber in 1844, making serviceable a gum which
had been used in various forms already but without ability to stand
heat. Elias Howe took out his first patent for a sewing machine in 1846,
being kept in vigorous fight against infringements for the next eight
years. The anaesthetic power of ether was discovered in 1844.
Gutta-percha was first imported hither in 1847. The first application of
the Bessemer steel process in this country was made in New Jersey in
1856, the manufacture of watches by machinery begun in 1857,
photo-lithography in 1859. New York had a clearing house in 1853, Boston
in 1855. The petroleum business may with propriety be dated from 1860,
although the existence of oil in Northwestern Pennsylvania had been long
known, and some use made of it since 1826. For several years experiments
had been making in refining the oil. The excellence of the light from it
now drew attention to the value of the product, wells began to be bored
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Cyrus W. Field.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
We close this chapter with a word about the painful financial crisis
that swept over the country in the autumn of 1857. Its causes are
somewhat occult, but two appear to have been the chief, viz., the
over-rapid building of railroads and the speculation induced by the
prosperity and the rise of prices incident to the new output of gold.
Interest on the best securities rose to three, four, and five per cent.
a month. On ordinary securities no money at all could be had. Commercial
houses of the highest repute went down. The climax was in September and
October. The three leading banks in Philadelphia suspended specie
payments, at once followed in this by all the banks of the Middle
States, and upon the 13th of the next month by the New York banks.
Manufacturing was very largely abandoned for the time, at least thirty
thousand operatives being thrown out of work in New York City alone.
Prices even of agricultural produce fell enormously. Tramps were to be
met on every road. Easier times fortunately returned by spring, when
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Barnacles on Cable.
PERIOD IV.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
1860-1868
CHAPTER I.
[1861]
The South's pride, holding it to the course once chosen, was also no
indictable offence. Nor could the North on its part be taxed with crime
for its "higher law fanaticism," which was simply the spirit of the age;
or for seeing early what all believe now, that slavery was a blight upon
the land. Much as was "nominated in the bond" of the Constitution,
neither law nor equity forbade free States to increase the more rapidly
in numbers, wealth, and other elements of prosperity; and northern
congressmen must have been other than human, if, seeing this increase
and being in the majority, they had gone on punctiliously heeding formal
obligation against manifest national weal. And when, in 1854, the great
sacred compact of 1820 was set aside by the authority of the South
itself, the North felt free even from formal fetters. All talk of
extra-legal negotiations and understandings touching slavery was now at
an end. The northern majority was at last united to legislate upon
slavery as it would, subject only to the Constitution. The South too
late saw this, and fearing that the peculiar institution, shut up to its
old home, would die, sought separation, with such chance of expansion as
this might yield.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
The South had come to love slavery too well, the Constitution too
little. Upon conserving slavery all parties there, however dissident as
to modes, however hostile in other matters, were unconditionally bent.
The chief argument even of those opposing disunion was that it
endangered slavery. Our new government, said Alexander H. Stephens, soon
to be vice-president of the Southern Confederacy, is founded, its
cornerstone rests, upon the great physical, philosophical, and moral
truth, to which Jefferson and the men of his day were blind, that the
negro, by nature or the curse of Canaan, is not equal to the white man;
that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is, by ordination of
Providence, whose wisdom it is not for us to inquire into or question,
his natural and normal condition. As the apostle of such a principle the
South could not but abjure the old establishment, whose genius and
working were inevitably in the contrary direction. Many confessed it to
be the essential nature of our Government, and not unfair treatment
under it, against which they rebelled.
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HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, VOL 3
Calhoun and for the indoctrination which the South had received in 1832.
Not alone Calhoun but nearly every other southerner of great influence,
at least from the day of the Missouri Compromise, had been inculcating
the supreme authority of the State as compared with the Union. The
southern States were all large, and, as travelling in or between them
was difficult and little common, they retained far more than those at
the North each its original separateness and peculiarities. Southern
population was more fixed than northern; southern state traditions were
held in far the deeper reverence. In a word, the colonial condition of
things to a great extent persisted in the South down to the very days of
the war. There was every reason why Alabama or North Carolina should,
more than Connecticut, feel like a separate nation.
This intense state consciousness might gradually have subsided but for
the deep prejudices and passions begotten of slavery and of the
opposition it encountered from the North. Their resolution, against
emancipation led Southerners to cherish a view which made it seem
possible for them as a last resort to sever their alliance with the
North. It was this conjunction of influences, linking the slave-holder's
jealousy and pride to a false but natural conception of state
sovereignty, which created in southern men that love of State, intense
and sincere as real patriotism, causing them to look upon northern men,
with their different theory, as foes and foreigners.
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The South's only significant indictment against the North was the one
concerning the personal liberty laws. Moderates like Stephens, indeed,
stoutly condemned this plea for secession as insufficient; but,
believing in the State as sovereign, they had perforce to yield, and
they became as enthusiastic as any when once this "paramount authority"
had spoken. "Fire-eaters," at first a small minority, saw this advantage
and worked it to the utmost. On its complaint touching the personal
liberty legislation the South's case utterly broke down, theorizing the
Union into a rope of sand, not "more perfect" but far less so than the
old, which itself was to be "perpetual." According to the Calhoun
contention States were the parties to a pact, and it was a good way from
clear that any northern State as such, even by personal liberty
legislation, had broken the alleged pact. The liberty laws were innocent
at least in form, and at worst had never been endorsed in any state
convention. Buchanan himself testified that the fugitive slave law had
been faithfully executed, and its operation is well known never to have
been resisted by any public authority.
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it should have been judged rational, prudent, or in the long run best
for the South itself. Could aught but frenzy have so drowned in
Americans the memories of our great past; or launched them upon a course
that must have ended by Mexicanizing this nation, wresting from it the
lead in freedom's march, and crushing out, in the breast of struggling
patriotism the world over, all hope of government by and for the people!
The South ought at least to have spared itself. Either its alleged
horror at the advance of central-sovereignty sentiment at the North was
sheer pretence, or it should have been certain that this section would
not hesitate, as Buchanan so illogically did, to coerce "rebellious"
state-bodies. If the North believed the totality of the nation to be the
"paramount authority," Lincoln would surely imitate Jackson instead of
Buchanan, and in doing so he would not seek military support in vain.
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Quite as sure, too, must the final result have appeared from the census
of 1850, had people been calm enough to read this. By that census the
free States had a population fifty per cent. above the population of the
slave states, slaves included, and the disparity was rapidly increasing.
Their wealth was even more preponderant, being, slaves apart, nearly one
hundred per cent. the larger. Their merchant tonnage was five times the
greater--even young inland Ohio out-doing old South Carolina in this,
and the one district of New York City the whole South. The North had
three or four times the South's miles of railway, all the sinews of war
without importation, and mechanics unnumbered and of every sort. And
while champions of the Union would fight with all the prestige of law,
national history and the status quo on their side, Europe's aid to the
South, or even that of the border slave States, was more than
problematical, as was a successful career for the Confederacy in case
its independence should chance to be won. Events proved that the very
defence of slavery had best prospect in the Union, and it seems as if
this might have been foreseen by all, as it actually was by some.
CHAPTER II.
SECESSION
[1861]
Secession was no new thought at the South. It lurked darkly behind the
Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798-99. It was brought out into
broad daylight by South Carolina in the nullification troubles of 1832.
"Texas or disunion!" was the cry at the South in 1843-44. In 1850 South
Carolina declared herself ready to secede in the event of legislation
hostile to slavery. Two years later the same State solemnly affirmed
that it had a right to secede, but that, out of deference to the wishes
of the other slave States, it forbore to exercise such right.
It must be admitted that in early years the North had helped to make the
thought of secession familiar. In 1803, in view of the great increase of
southern territory by the Louisiana Purchase, and again in 1813, when
New England opposition to the war with England culminated in the
Hartford Convention, there had been talk of a separate northern
confederacy. But from that time on the thought of disunion died out at
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the North, while the South dallied with it more and more boldly. During
the presidential campaign of 1856, threats were made that if Fremont,
the republican candidate, should be elected, the South would leave the
Union. In October of that year a secret convention of southern governors
was held at Raleigh, N. C., supposed to have been for the purpose of
considering such a contingency. Governor Wise, of Virginia, who called
the convention, afterward proclaimed that had Fremont been chosen he
would have marched to Washington at the head of 20,000 troops, seized
the Capitol, and prevented the inauguration. This threatening attitude
in 1856 may have been chiefly an electioneering device; but during the
next four years the gulf between North and South widened rapidly, and
the southern leaders turned more and more resolutely toward secession as
the remedy for their alleged wrongs.
But the enthusiasts in South Carolina had got all the encouragement they
wanted, and bided their time. Their time was at hand. The presidential
election fell on November 6th. Next day the tidings flashed over the
land that Abraham Lincoln had been elected President by the vote of a
solid North against a solid South. The wires had scarcely ceased to
thrill with this message of death to slavery-extension, when South
Carolina sounded a trumpet-call to the South. Her Legislature ordered a
secession state convention to meet in December, issued a call for 10,000
volunteers, and voted money for the purchase of arms. Federal
office-holders resigned. Judge Magrath, of the United States District
Court, laid aside his robes, declaring, "So far as I am concerned, the
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"The union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under
the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved."
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The secession of South Carolina was greeted with joy in most of the
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other slave States. Montgomery and Mobile, Ala., each fired one hundred
guns. At Richmond, Va., a palmetto banner was unfurled, while bells,
bonfires, and processions celebrated the event all over the South. The
other cotton States, spurred on by the bold deed of South Carolina,
rapidly followed her lead. Mississippi seceded January 9th, Florida the
10th, Alabama the 11th, Georgia the 19th, Louisiana the 26th, Texas
February 1st.
Yet, in spite of all, the vote was close even in several of the cotton
States. The Georgia people wanted new safeguards for slavery, but did
not at first desire secession. Alexander H. Stephens, who headed the
anti-secession movement, declared that Georgia was won over to take the
fatal step at last only by the cry, "Better terms can be made out of the
Union than in it." Even then the first vote for secession stood only 165
to 130. In Louisiana the popular vote for convention delegates was
20,000 for secession and 17,000 against.
The border States held aloof. Kentucky and Tennessee refused to call
conventions. So, for long, did North Carolina. The convention of
Virginia and of Missouri each had a majority of Union delegates. When
the Confederate Government was organized in February, only seven of the
fifteen slave States had seceded. Their white population was about
2,600,000, or less than half that of the entire slave region. But
Arkansas and North Carolina were soon swept along by the current, and
seceded in May. Virginia and Tennessee were finally carried (the former
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in May, the latter in June) by the aid of troops, who swarmed in from
the seceded States, and turned the elections into a farce. Unionists in
the Virginia Convention were given the choice to vote secession, leave,
or be hanged. Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland resisted all
attempts to drag them into the Confederacy, though the first two, after
the United States began to apply force, appeared neutral rather than
loyal.
The seizure of United States property went hand in hand with secession.
Most of the government works were feebly garrisoned, and made no
resistance. By January 15th the secessionists had possession of arsenals
at Augusta, Ga., Mount Vernon, Ala., Fayetteville, N. C, Chattahoochee,
Fla., and Baton Rouge, La., of forts in Alabama and Georgia, of a
navy-yard at Pensacola, Fla., and of Forts Jackson and St. Philip,
commanding the mouth of the Mississippi. At one arsenal they found
150,000 pounds of powder, at another 22,000 muskets and rifles, besides
ammunition and cannon, at another 50,000 small arms and 20 heavy guns.
The whole South had been well supplied with military stores by the
enterprising foresight of J. B. Floyd, of Virginia, Buchanan's Secretary
of War, who had sent thither 115,000 muskets from the Springfield
arsenal alone.
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Major Anderson removing his Forces from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter,
December 26, 1861.
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The southern leaders were not more anxious to get the slave States out
of the Union than to get them into a grand Southern Confederacy. Early
in January a caucus of secession congressmen was held at Washington, and
arrangements made for a constitutional convention.
February 4, 1861, delegates from the States which had left the Union met
at Montgomery, Ala., and formed themselves into a provisional Congress.
A temporary government, styled "The Confederate States of America," was
soon organized. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was chosen President by
the Congress, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice-President.
Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808. He graduated at West Point, fought
as colonel in the Mexican war, served three terms as congressman from
Mississippi, the last two in the Senate, and was Secretary of War under
Pierce. After Calhoun's death, in 1850, he became the most prominent of
the ultra southern leaders. The new President was brought from Jackson,
Miss., to Montgomery by a special train, his progress a continual
ovation. Cheering crowds gathered at every station to see and hear him.
February 18th Davis was inaugurated. In his address, which was calm and
moderate in tone, he declared that reunion was now "neither practicable
nor desirable;" he hoped for peace, but said that if the North refused
this, the South must appeal to arms, secure in the blessing of God on a
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just cause.
Jefferson Davis.
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Alexander H. Stephens.
By the last of April all the seceded States had ratified this
constitution. The other slave States were taken in as fast as they
withdrew from the Union. The Southern Confederacy, now fairly launched,
set sail over strange seas upon its short but eventful voyage. At the
start the hopes of those it bore rose high. Few believed that the North
would dare draw sword. Even if it should, the southern heart, proud and
brave, felt sure of victory. King Cotton would win Europe to their side.
Peace would come soon. Visions of a glorious future dazzled the
imaginative mind of the South. A vast slave empire, founded on the
"great physical, philosophical, and moral truth" that slavery is the
"natural condition," of the inferior black race, would spread encircling
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arms around the Great Gulf, swallowing up the feeble states of Mexico,
and rise to a wealth and glory unparalleled in the history of nations.
CHAPTER III.
[1860-1861]
Throughout the North the feeling was strong against all efforts at
coercion. Most democratic papers and many republican ones insisted
loudly that use of arms was not to be mentioned, and that the South must
be conciliated. A democratic convention met at Albany in January, to
protest against forcible measures. The sentiment that if force were to
be used it should be "inaugurated at home," here evoked hearty response.
There were signs of even a deeper disaffection. An ex-governor of New
Jersey declared that his State would join the Confederacy. Mayor Wood,
of New York, proposed that if the Union were broken up, his city should
announce herself an independent republic.
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the slave States, yet denied the right of secession, and proposed to
regain and hold the property and places belonging to the United States
in all parts thereof. There would be no bloodshed, he said, unless it
were forced upon the Government. "In your hands, my dissatisfied
fellow-countrymen," so ran his memorable words, "in your hands, not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. You can have no conflict
without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not enemies, but
friends." This message, held out as an olive branch, the South denounced
as a menace. Some northern papers condemned it as the "knell and requiem
of the Union." But the general feeling it evoked at the North was one of
rejoicing. People believed that a hand both moderate and firm had at
length seized the helm.
The new President stood faced by an herculean task. Congress was not yet
fully purged of traitors, while Washington still swarmed with their
friends and agents. Floyd's treachery had tied Lincoln's hands. All the
best munitions of war had been sent south. Of the rifled cannon
belonging to the United States not one was left. Only a handful of
regular troops were within call, and the resignations of their officers
came in daily. The plight of the navy and treasury was no better.
Amazing coolness and the absurd prejudice against coercing States
largely possessed even the loyal masses. The attack on Sumter was thus a
god-send.
April 8th, Governor Pickens received notice from President Lincoln that
an attempt would be made to provision that fort. Thereupon General
Beauregard, who had left the United States army to take charge of the
fortifications at Charleston, was ordered by President Davis to demand
its evacuation. Major Anderson replied that they should be starved out
by the 15th, and would leave the fort then unless his Government sent
supplies. This answer was held unsatisfactory, and at 3.20 on the
morning of April 12th Beauregard notified Anderson that his batteries
would open fire in one hour.
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The wharves, roofs, and steeples of Charleston were black with expectant
crowds, straining their eyes down the harbor where the silent castle
loomed up through the dim morning light. Boom! From a mortar battery to
the south a bombshell rises high into the air, describes its graceful
trajectory and falls within Sumter's enclosure. It is the signal gun.
One battery after another responds, until in less than an hour the
stronghold is girt by an almost continuous circle of flashing artillery.
Shells scream through the air and explode above the doomed work, and
great cannon-balls bury themselves in the brick walls. Still Sumter
speaks not. Anderson is waiting for daylight. About six o'clock he
breakfasts his garrison on pork and water, the only provisions left. An
hour later the embrasures are opened, the black guns run out, and Sumter
hurls back her answer to the voice of rebellion. The bombs making it
unsafe to use the barbette cannons of the open rampart, Anderson was
confined to his twenty-one casemate pieces, mostly of light calibre. The
fire was kept up briskly all the morning. Sumter stood it well, but did
little damage to the opposing batteries. At sunset the guns of both
sides became silent, but the mortars maintained a slow fire through the
night.
Early next morning the cannonade opened afresh, and in the course of the
forenoon hot shot set fire to Sumter's wooden barracks. The flames soon
got beyond control; the powder magazine had to be closed; and the heat
and smoke became so stifling that the garrison was forced, in order to
avoid suffocation, to lie face downward upon the floor, each man with a
wet cloth at his mouth. Powder was at last exhausted. About one o'clock
the flag was shot away. It was immediately raised again upon a low
jury-mast, but could not be seen for the smoke, and Beauregard sent to
ask if Anderson had surrendered. The latter offered to evacuate upon the
terms named before the bombardment, to which Beauregard agreed, and all
firing ceased. The next day at noon, after a salute of fifty guns to
their flag, Major Anderson and his men evacuated the scene of their
heroism, and soon after took passage for New York.
The disunion leaders had rightly calculated that an open blow would
bring the border slave States into the Confederacy; but they had not
anticipated the effect of such a deed beyond Mason and Dixon's line.
When it was known that the old flag had been fired upon, a thrill of
passionate rage electrified the North from Maine to Oregon. Then was
witnessed an uprising unparalleled in our history if not in that of
mankind. From every city, town, and hamlet, loud and earnest came the
call, "The Union must be preserved! Away with compromise! Away with
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the State into secession. Baltimore was white-hot with southern zeal,
determined that the Bay State troops should never reach Washington
through that metropolis. Eight of the cars containing the soldiers were
drawn safely across the city. The next was assailed by a hooting mob,
and the windows smashed in by bricks and paving stones. Some of the
soldiers were wounded by pistol shots, and a scattering fire was
returned. Sand, stones, anchors, and other obstructions were heaped upon
the track. The remaining four companies therefore left the cars and
started to march. They soon met the mob, flying a secession flag. A
melee ensued. The troops moved double-quick toward the Washington depot,
surrounded by a seething mass of infuriated secessionists filling the
air with their brick-bats and stones, while bullets whizzed from
sidewalks and windows. The troops returned the fire, and several in the
crowd fell. The chief of police with fifty officers appeared on the
scene, who, by presenting cocked revolvers, held the rioters in check
for a while, till the distressed troops could join their comrades.
Baltimore was in the hands of this secessionist band for the rest of the
day. The bridges north of that city were also burned, so that no more
troops could reach Washington by this route.
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Meanwhile the capital city was in great peril, devotees of the South
being each moment expected to make an attack upon it. Only fifteen
companies of local militia and six of regulars were present at
inauguration time, stationed by General Scott at critical points in the
city. Pickets were posted continually on roads and bridges outside. Four
hundred Pennsylvania troops happily arrived on April 18th, and the next
day came the Sixth Massachusetts. But the city was not yet secure. There
were reports that large bodies of men were gathering in Maryland and
Virginia for a descent upon it. Washington was put in a state of siege,
the public buildings barricaded and provided with sentinels. The
Government seized the Potomac steamers and also all the flour within
reach. Business ceased. Alarmed by rumors of a military impressment,
hundreds of government clerks, besides officers in the army and navy,
came out in their true colors and fled south. Enemies at Baltimore had
cut off telegraphic communication between Washington and the North.
Reports came that re-enforcements were on the way, but day followed day
without witnessing their arrival. The President and all Unionists were
in an agony of suspense.
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CHAPTER IV.
WAR BEGUN
[1861]
It was now apparent to both North and South that war was inevitable. Yet
neither side believed the other in full earnest or dreamed of a long
struggle. Sanguine northerners looked to see the rebellion stamped out
in thirty days. The more cautious allowed three months.
The President, however, soon saw that more troops, enlisted for a longer
term, would be necessary. At the outset the South certainly possessed
decided advantages: greater earnestness, more men of leisure aching for
war and accustomed to saddle and firearms, a militia better organized,
owing to fear of slave insurrections, and now for a long time in special
training, and withal a certain soldierly fire and dash native to the
people. The South also had superior arms. Enlistments there were prompt
and abundant. The troops were ably commanded, 262 of the 951 regular
army officers whom secession found in service, including many very high
in rank, joining their States in the new cause, besides a large number
of West Point graduates from civil life.
Accordingly on May 3d Mr. Lincoln issued a new call for troops, 42,000
volunteers to serve three years or during the war, 23,000 regulars, and
18,000 seamen. It was of first importance to secure Maryland for the
Union. On the night of May 13th, under cover of a thunderstorm, General
Butler suddenly entered rebellious Baltimore with less than 1,000 men,
and entrenched upon Federal Hill. Overawed by this bold move, the
secessionists made no resistance. A political reaction soon set in
throughout the State, which became firmly Unionist. Baltimore was once
more open to the passage of troops, who kept steadily hurrying to the
front.
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All this time both North and South were struggling for possession of the
neutral States. Governor Jackson, of Missouri, was straining every nerve
to force his State into secession. Early in May two or three regiments
of militia were got together and drilled in a camp near St. Louis.
Cannon were sent by President Davis, boxed up and marked "marble."
Captain Lyon, of the regular army, who held the St. Louis arsenal with a
few companies, reconnoitred the secessionist camp in female dress. The
next day, May 10th, assisted by local militia, he suddenly surrounded it
and took 1,200 prisoners. A month later he embarked some soldiers on
three swift steamers, sailed up the Missouri to Jefferson City, the
state capital, and raised the Union flag once more over the State House.
Governor Jackson fled. During the next month all the armed disunionists
were driven into the southwestern part of the State.
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to retreat north. General Fremont had shortly before been put at the
head of the Western Department, which included Missouri, Kentucky,
Illinois, and Kansas. His difficulties were great. He was unable to
clear the State of secessionists, who besieged Lexington and took it on
September 20th. Generals Hunter and Halleck, Fremont's successors, were
equally unsuccessful, and the State was harassed by a petty warfare all
the year.
The mountain portion of Virginia belonged to the West rather than to the
South. It contained only 18,000 slaves, against nearly 500,000 in
Eastern Virginia. Union sentiment was therefore strong, and when the old
State seceded from the Union, Western Virginia proceeded to secede from
the State. General Lee sent troops to hold it for the Confederacy.
Thereupon General McClellan, commanding the Department of the Ohio,
threw several regiments across the river into Virginia, and defeated the
foe in minor engagements at Philippi, Rich Mountain, and Carrick's Ford.
By the middle of July he was able to report, "Secession is killed in
this country." Later in the year the Confederates renewed their
attempts, but were finally driven out. West Virginia organized a
separate government, and was subsequently admitted to the Union as a
State by itself.
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Anxious to see the rebellion put down by one blow, the North was
becoming impatient. "On to Richmond!" was the ceaseless cry. Yielding to
this, Scott ordered an advance. July 16th, General McDowell, leaving one
division to protect Washington, led forth an army 28,000 strong to
attack the enemy at Manassas. He advanced slowly and with great caution.
The enemy were found posted in a line eight miles long upon the south
bank of Bull Run, a small river three miles east of Manassas, running in
a southeasterly direction. Several days were spent in reconnoitering.
Meanwhile, Johnston, whom Patterson was expected to hold at Winchester,
had stolen away to join Beauregard, their combined forces numbering
about 30,000. McDowell was ignorant of Johnston's movement, supposing
him still at Winchester.
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The fight began about ten o'clock. Both sides were soon re-enforced.
After two hours' stubborn fighting the Confederates were driven back
across the pike, beyond Young's Branch of Bull Run, and took up a second
position on a hill each side of the Henry House. The whole Union force
had now crossed Bull Run. Griffin's and Ricketts' powerful batteries
were posted in favorable positions, whence they poured a deadly fire
upon the Confederates. The whole Union line advanced to the turnpike.
About two o'clock the Confederates were forced to abandon their second
position and fall back still farther.
Early in the morning Beauregard and Johnston had given orders for an
attack upon the Union forces across the river, not knowing that McDowell
had assumed the offensive. These orders were now countermanded, and all
available troops hurried up the Sudley road toward the Warrenton pike
front. Till after noon the prospect for the Confederates looked gloomy.
They had been steadily driven back. Some of their regiments had lost
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becomes general along the Confederate centre and left. The Union
generals are getting alarmed. So far they have been confident of
victory. Now regiment after regiment is going to pieces in this terrific
melee, and still the "rebels" hold their ground. About half-past four
o'clock General Early arrives by rail with three thousand more of
Johnston's army, and, assisted by a battery and five companies of
cavalry, bursts upon the extreme right flank and rear of McDowell's
line.
This manoeuvre decided the day. The Union ranks waver, break, flee. The
centre and left soon follow, though in better order. Union and
Confederate generals alike were astonished at the sudden change.
McDowell found it impossible to stem the tide once set in, and gave
orders to fall back across Bull Run to Centreville, where his reserves
were stationed. As the retreat went on it turned to a downright rout.
The Confederates made only a feeble pursuit, but fear of pursuit spread
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alarm through the flying ranks, demoralized by long marching and hard
fighting. Baggage and ammunition-wagons, ambulances, private vehicles
which had been standing in the rear, joined the sweeping tide, adding to
the confusion and in some places causing temporary blockade. Frightened
teamsters cut traces and galloped recklessly away. Panic and stampede
resulted, soon reaching the soldiers. Flinging away muskets and
knapsacks, they sought safety in flight. The army entered Centreville a
disorganized mass. Fugitives could not be stayed even there, but
streamed through and on toward Washington. McDowell gave the order to
continue the retreat. The reserve brigades, with the one regiment of
regulars, covered the rear in good order. All that night the crazy
hustle to the rear was kept up, and on Monday the hungry and exhausted
stragglers poured into Washington under a drizzling rain, the people
receiving them with heavy hearts but generous hands.
The Union loss was 481 killed, 1,011 wounded, 1,460 prisoners.
Twenty-five guns were lost, thirteen of them on the retreat. The
Confederate loss was 387 killed, 1,580 wounded. The numbers actively
engaged were about 18,000 on each side. General Sherman pronounced Bull
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Run "one of the best planned battles of the war, but one of the worst
fought." The latter fact was but natural. The troops on both sides were
poorly drilled, and most of them had never been under fire before.
Precision of movement, concert of action on any large scale, were
impossible. Neither side needed to be ashamed of this initial trial.
The North was at first much cast down. The faint-hearted considered the
Union hopelessly lost, but pluck and patriotism carried the day. On the
morrow after the battle Congress voted that an army of 500,000 should be
raised, and appropriated $500,000,000 to carry on the war. General
McClellan, whose brilliant campaign in West Virginia had won him easy
fame, was put in command of the Army of the Potomac. The young general
was a West Point graduate and had served with distinction in the Mexican
War. An accomplished military student, a skilful engineer, and a superb
organizer, he threw himself with energy into the task of fortifying
Washington and building up a splendid army. Many of the three-months
volunteers re-enlisted. Thousands of new recruits came flocking to camp,
and before long companies, regiments, and brigades amounting to 150,000
men were drilling daily on the banks of the Potomac, while formidable
works crowned the entire crest of Arlington Heights. In October the aged
General Scott resigned, and McClellan, at the summit of his popularity
with army and people, became commander-in-chief.
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For several weeks after Bull Run it was feared that Beauregard and his
men would descend upon Washington, then in a defenceless condition; but
they were in no state to attack. They too felt the need of preparation
for the coming struggle, whose magnitude both sides now began to
realize.
On the whole, then, the South had reason to be gratified with the
aggregate result of the first year of war. Bull Run gave the
Confederates a sense of invincibility, and the ready recognition by the
foreign powers of their rights as belligerents, offered hope that
England would soon acknowledge their independence itself. And they
thought that the North had been doing its best when it had only been
getting ready.
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